
Class. 
Book. 
GopyriglitN". 



-A^ 



0QPTRIGHT DEFOSm 



READINGS IN 
ENGLISH PROSE OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



EDITED BY 

RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN 

n 

Professor of English in the Uni-versity of Illinoisy 

recently Associate Professor of English in 

Leland Stanford Junior Uni-versity 




BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(3E{je RiVicriSitie presji Cambribge 






COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



^'f 
h 



©CI.A2;J7077 



PREFACE 

The great Doctor Johnson, in one of the essays reprinted in 
this volume, condemns the multiplication of books undertaken 
by those who " have often no other task than to lay two books 
before them out of which they compile a third, without any new 
materials of their own." But if it be supposed on this ground 
that he would frown on the present undertaking, one might 
plead his own admission that there is an occasional compiler 
who, ■' though he exerts no great abilities in the work, facilitates 
the progress of others" and makes "that easy of attainment 
which is already written." Here, at any rate, are suggested the 
origin and purpose of this collection. For some time it has been 
possible for those studying periods of English literature to find 
in single volumes fairly representative selections from the poets 
of the several ages ; but to represent prose writings adequately 
is much more difficult, and those who have met this problem 
have found it one involving no little trouble and expense. 
Through the cooperation of the publishers, who have shown 
themselves ready to undertake the making of a volume suffi- 
ciently generous to accomplish for prose what relatively meagre 
books will do for poetry, it is hoped that the needs of students of 
eighteenth-century literature have been sufiiciently met. If this 
hope shall be justified by experience, similar volumes may be 
undertaken for the earlier and later periods. 

The principles governing the choice of selections may be 
briefly explained. In the first place, it was thought well to re- 
present the half-dozen (more or less) most important prose 
writers of the century by fairly generous and complete speci- 
mens of their work, approximating some twenty to thirty thou- 
sand words each. These selections cover, in the experience of 
the editor, the assignments of prescribed reading set for one or 
two weeks, in college courses dealing with the century as a 
whole. The authors thus largely represented are Defoe, Swift, 
Steele, Addison, Johnson, Boswell, and Burke. 

In the second place, it was desired to represent the lesser 



iv PREFACE 

writers of the age by briefer specimens of their work, to which 
students could be referred for the cursory illustration of mat- 
ters discussed in lectures or text-books. Such are the selec- 
tions from the philosophers, the epistolarians, the pamphlet- 
eers, and the novelists of the century. The last of these groups 
— the novelists — it was not at first proposed to include at all, 
since their work in its most important aspects can hardly be 
represented by extracts. But it was suggested by some of the 
friends who were good enough to criticise the first draft of the 
contents of the collection, that the novelists might be repre- 
sented as prose writers, in perhaps the same proportion that 
they would occupy in a course dealing with the period as a 
whole but without special attention to the novel or the drama; 
and this suggestion has been followed. The selections made 
from the novelists, then, must not be supposed to exhibit the 
authors as novelists; but they may serve to illustrate the far- 
cical humor of Fielding, the contrasting sentimentalism of 
Richardson and Sterne, and the romantic machinery of the 
" tales of terror." 

This is as far as the collection need go, for those concerned 
only with the intrinsic values of literature. But itwas desired to 
go further, and include specimens — sometimes of no consider- 
able literary quality — which are suggestive for what might 
be called the laboratory study of the history of literature, — 
passages exemplifying important critical doctrines or literary 
tendencies of the age. Such are the selections from Dennis, 
Gibber, the Wartons, and Hurd, the critical chapters from 
Fielding and the Prefaces of Richardson. In like manner the 
critical writings of Addison and Johnson have been repre- 
sented more largely than intrinsic interest might dictate, 
especially where they touch on poetry which the reader may be 
presumed to have been studying. The wise teacher or student 
will surely seek, where it is possible, to make one writer illus- 
trate another, and to find examples of contemporary judg- 
ments and aims which will make less mysterious for the modern 
reader literary fashions of an earlier age. So there is value, not 
only in Johnson's lastingly sound analyses of the poetry of 
Dryden and Pope, but also in the characteristic limitations of 
his appreciation of Milt( n. And there is real interest, even for 
those who have no desire to go deeply into literary theory, in 



PREFACE V 

the discussion of poetic justice by Dennis and Addison, in 
Johnson's final exposure of the fallacy in the doctrine of the 
unities, in Fielding's penetrating comments on his own art, and 
in the casual but significant remarks of Cowper and Gray on 
their work as poets. Those who care to do so may be enabled to 
go still further into the criticism of the century, making the 
acquaintance of its efforts in the direction of an aesthetic 
theory, through the selections from Addison's and Hume's 
essays on Taste, Reynolds's discussion of Beauty, and Burke's 
account of the Sublime and Beautiful. A similar attempt has 
been made to enable the student to illustrate for himself " the 
spirit of 1789," through the selections from Godwin, Paine, and 
The A n ti- Jacob in . 

Certain books, from which extracts would otherwise have 
been a matter of course, have been passed by because they are 
commonly familiar in more elementary reading: these include 
the first two parts of Gulliver^s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, the 
De Coverley papers. The Vicar of Wakefield, and Burke's writ- 
ings on the American Revolution. A place has been made for 
the dubious prose of Macpherson's Ossianic writings, on the 
purely practical ground that they should be known to the stu- 
dent of the period, but are not represented in any of the stand- 
ard collections of eighteenth-century poetry. 

Complete compositions have of course been preferred, other 
things being equal, especially from the more important writers. 
But where actual utility, or exigencies of space, demanded, the 
editor has freely excerpted, in the manner of one reading aloud 
under circumstances where it is desirable that the knowledge of 
the reader should save the time of the hearer. Omissions have 
been indicated scrupulously, and in most cases it is possible, 
by noting these indications, to discover whether any selection 
includes the beginning and the end of the chapter, essay, or 
letter from which it is taken. There are, however, a very few 
unnoted omissions pudoris causa, to which it seemed unneces- 
sary to call attention in a non-critical text. 

The geographical situation of the editor has made it impos- 
sible, regrettably, to present a verified text of a considerable 
number of the selections; in other words, in many cases it has 
been necessary to depend on the work of previous editors and 
pubhshers. In some cases one need have little fear of the re- 



VI PREFACE 

suits; in others there is too much reason to suspect that the text 
must be bettered hereafter, since for several of the writers repre- 
sented no good modern editing has been accomplished. It has 
fortunately been possible to give a sound text in certain cases 
where there has been conspicuous need of one : for example, the 
text of Defoe's essay on Academies and his Shortest Way with 
the Dissenters has been taken from original sources, and cor- 
rects errors which have been multiplied in earlier reprints. 
Spelling and punctuation have been everywhere modernized. 

Footnotes have been supplied according to a principle which 
cannot be followed with consistency, but which amounts to 
this: give only such information as may be assumed to be neces- 
sary for the apprehending of the general meaning of the text and 
not to be available in a convenient dictionary. Extended or un- 
common quotations from Latin writers, so beloved in our period, 
have been translated ; phrases which should be the property of 
every cultivated person have not. Perhaps an incidental result 
of the reading of this book may prove to be some mitigation of 
the heresy that it is possible to know English literature without 
understanding the Latin tongue. 

And now, if any one may be presumed to have read this Pre- 
face thus far, the editor may venture to ask the privilege, after 
setting forth impartially the words of so many other and better 
men, to do himself the pleasure of adding two remarks which 
follow from the repeated reading, in manuscript and proof, of 
the whole contents of the volume. The first remark is in noway 
a matter of literature, but tends toward cheerfulness of mind so 
clearly that it may be justifiable in any connection. Whoever 
dips far into these eighteenth-century authors will discover that 
in their age it was believed that men were more eager than in 
earlier times for the getting and the display of wealth; that the 
whole world was forsaking the country and making life wretched 
in cities; that old-fashioned honesty and simplicity of manners 
were becoming hard to find; that young persons were increas- 
ingly disrespectful of their elders; that books and periodicals 
were being multiplied to an alarming excess; and that church- 
going, with other practices of the Christian religion, was 
rapidly going out of use. These were some of the characteris- 
tic ills of the period. Perhaps, then, when the reader is next 
told that they are the characteristic ills of the early twentieth 



PREFACE vii 

century, he may suspect that they were equally so in the first, 
the fifth, and the fifteenth, and may derive some consolation 
thereby. 

The second remark, more germane to the purposes of the 
book, is that the repeated perusal of this corpus of eighteenth- 
century prose has tended always to increase, on the part of at 
least one reader, his respect for the person and works of Samuel 
Johnson. The space here accorded him is by no means due to 
mere tradition or literary orthodoxy, but to a genuine belief in 
the lasting worth of what he had to say. Granted certain of his 
pet foibles, — such as the habit of beginning every composition 
with a sonorous abstraction that gives no remotest clue to the 
subject in hand, and his willful unappreciativeness of arepubh- 
.can like Milton or a dilettante like Gray, — and where shall 
you find one who wrote on almost every thing and said so little, 
whether on attics, morals, or Shakespeare, which is not still 
true and still important? So let the Preface end with him, as it 
began; and it is to the memory of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., at 
once the most sturdy and the most pathetic figure among its 
contributors, that this book would be dedicated, were it not 
presumption thus lightly to seek to disturb so venerable a 
ghost. 

R. M. A. 



CONTENTS 

DANIEL DEFOE 
An Essay upon Projects (1697) .... 
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) . 
The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706) 
A Seasonable Warning and Caution (1712) . 
And What ir the Pretender should Come? (17 13) 
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) 



I 

II 
23 
32 
35 
41 



^ JONATHAN SWIFT 

A Tale of a Tub (1704) 52 

The Abolishing of Christianity (1708) . . . .76 

A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue (17 12) . 87 

Gulliver's Travels (1726) 94 

A Modest Proposal (1729) 114 

RICHARD STEELE 
^ The Tatler (1709-10) 

No. I [Prospectus] 123 

No. 25 [Dueling] 125 

No. 95 [Mr. Bickerstaff Visits a Friend] .... 127 

No. 104 [Old Letters] 131 

No. 181 [Memories of Sorrow] 133 

No. 217 [Scolds] 13s 

No. 263 [Fashionable Hours] 138 

The Spectator (1711-12) 

No. 4 [Character of the Spectator] 141 

No. 49 [Coffee-House Characters] 145 

No. 157 [Boys' Schools] 148 

No. 324 [The Mohock Club. — A Love Letter] . . .151 

The Guardian (1713) 

No. 34 [Character of a Gentleman] 154 

Mr. Steele's Apology for Himself (1714) . . . .157 

V JOSEPH ADDISON 

The Spectator (1711-12) 

No. 10 [Prospectus] 159 

No. 16 [To his Correspondents] 162 



X CONTENTS 

No. i8 [The Italian Opera] 165 

No. 26 [Westminster Abbey] 168 

No. 34 [The Spectator at the Club] 170 

No. 40 [Tragedy] 1 74 

No. 50 [The Indian Kings] 176 

No. 62 [Wit] 180 

No. 70 [The Ballad of Chevy Chase] 184 

No. 81 [Party Patches] 189 

No. 159 [The Vision of Mirzah] 192 

No. 267 [Paradise Lost] ...'.... 197 

No. 323 [Journal of a Lady] 201 

No. 409 [Taste] 204 

No. 419 [The Supernatural in Poetry] 208 

V Jy( JOHN DENNIS 

The Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1712) . . 211 
Remarks upon Cato (1713) 215 

^ ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF SHAFTESBURY 

Characteristics (171 i) 222 

<^ GEORGE BERKELEY 

Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) . . 231 

./ BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

The Fable of the Bees (1714, 1723) 245 

y LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

Letters (1717-55) 255 

^ ALEXANDER POPE 

Preface to Shakespeare (1725) ' . 265 

COLLEY GIBBER 
Apology for the Life of Colley Gibber (1740) . .*:- — * 269 

^ HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE 

Of the True Use of Retirement and Study (1752) . .273 
Letter to Alexander Pope (1753) 277 

SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

Clarissa Harlowe (1747-48) 281 

"^ Sir Charles Grandison (1753) 287 



t^ , J, CONTENTS xi 

HENRY FIELDING 

Joseph Andrews (1742) 293 

Tom Jones (1749) ' . . . 304 

/ PHILIP STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 

Letters to his Son (1747-49) 315 

v' THOMAS GRAY 

Letters (1742-68) ' . . .324 

t/ THOMAS WARTON 

Observations on the Fairy Queen (1754) . . . -331 

^ JOSEPH WARTON 

The Genius and Writings of Pope (1756, 1782) . . . 336 

'- SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The Rambler (1751) 

No. 102 [The Voyage of Life] 341 

No. 117 [Living in a Garret] 345 

No. 161 [History of a Garret] 350 

Preface to the Dictionary (1755) 354 

The Idler (1758-59) 

No. 36 [The Bugbear Style] 363 

No. 85 [The MultipHcation of Books] 365 

No. 88 ["What have ye done?"] 367 

Preface to Shakespeare (1765) 369 

Lives of the English Poets (1779-S1) 

Milton 386 

'4 Dryden 392 

hi Addison 402 

Pope 405 

DAVID HUME 
Essay on the Standard of Taste (1757) .... 410 
My Own Life (1777) 417 

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 
Essay on the Idea of Beauty (1759) 421 

LETTERS OF JUNIUS (1769-71) . . • ~ • • .425 



xii CONTENTS 

\y OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

The Bee (1759) 435 

The Citizen of the World (1762) 

Letter 4 [Character of the English] 440 

Letter 13 [Westminster Abbey] 443 

Letter 21 [At the Play] 446 

Letter 41 [St. Paul's] 450 

Letter 54 [Beau Tibbs] 452 

Letter 55 [A Visit to Tibbs] *. .455 

. Letter 98 [Courts of Justice] 458 

' RICHARD HURD 

Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) .... 462 : ,-UC 

HORACE WALPOLE 

Letters (1746-74) 467 

The Castle of Otranto (1764) 476 

/ ^ 

*/ LAURENCE STERNE 

Tristram Shandy (1759-67) 480 

A Sentimental Journey (1768) 490 

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 
Humphrey Clinker (1771) 502 

FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D'ARBLAY) 
Diary and Letters (1778-92) 511 

WILLIAM COWPER 
Letters (1766-85) . . 525 

THE MONTHLY REVIEW 
Review of Burns's Poems (1786) 534 

, /EDWARD GIBBON 

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) . 537 
Memoirs (1796) 542 

GILBERT WHITE 
Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) . 550 



/ 



CONTENTS xiii 

EDMUND BURKE 

Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756) . . 558 

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) 570 

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) . . 576 

Letter to a Noble Lord (1796) . . . . . . 592 

THOMAS PAINE 
The Rights of Man (1791) 6x6 

JAMES BOSWELL 
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) . . .624 
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 627 

WILLIAM GODWIN 
Politica l Justice (1793) 667 

ANN RADCLIFFE 
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) 676 

MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 
The Monk (1795) 684 

THE ANTI-JACOBIN 
The Rovers (1798) 691 



\p JAMES MACPHERSON 



APPENDIX 

iMES M^ 

The Poems of Ossian (1760, 1762) 697 

BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES . . 707 
INDEX 725 






DANIEL DEFOE 

AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS 
1697 

[This essay, one of Defoe's earliest works, included a History of Projects 
and separate sections proposing plans for reform of the banking and bank- 
ruptcy laws, an insurance system, the development of public roads, the 
care of idiots, and various academies. The last-named section is here re- 
presented by two extracts.] 

OF ACADEMIES 

We have in England fewer of these than in any part of the 
world, at least where learning is in so much esteem. But to 
make amends, the two great seminaries we have are, without 
comparison, the greatest — I won't say the best — in the 
world ; and though much might be said here concerning univer- 
sities in general, and foreign academies in particular, I content 
myself with noting that part in which we seem defective. The 
French, who justly value themselves upon erecting the most 
celebrated Academy of Europe, owe the lustre of it very much 
to the great encouragement the kings of France have given to it. 
And one of the members, making a speech at his entrance, tells 
you that " 'tis not the least of the glories of their invincible 
monarch to have engrossed all the learning of the world in that 
sublime body." 

The peculiar study of the Academy of Paris has been to re- 
fine and correct their own language, which they have done to 
that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all the courts of 
Christendom as the language allowed to be most universal. 

I had the honor once to be a member of a small society who 
seemed to offer at this noble design in England ; but the great- 
ness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned 
prevailed with them to desist an enterprise which appeared 
too great for private hands to undertake. We want indeed a 
RicheHeu to commence such a work ; for I am persuaded were 
there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would 



2 DANIEL DEFOE 

not want capacities who "could carry on the work to a glory 
equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue is a 
subject not at all less worthy the labor of such a society than 
the French, and capable of a much greater perfection. The 
learned among the French will own that the comprehensive- 
ness of expression is a glory in which the English tongue not only 
equals, but excels its neighbors. Rapin, St. Evremont, and the 
most eminent French authors have acknowledged it; and my 
Lord Roscommon, who is allowed to be a good judge of English, 
because he wrote it as exactly as any ever did, expresses what 
I mean in these lines : — 

For who did ever in French authors see 

The comprehensive English energy? 

The weighty buUion of one sterUng line, 

Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine. 

"And if our neighbors will yield us, as their greatest critic 
has done, the preference for sublimity and nobleness of style, 
we will willingly quit all pretensions to their insignificant 
gaiety." 

'Tis a great pity that a subject so noble should not have some 
as noble to attempt it; and for a method, what greater can be 
set before us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the 
French their due, stands foremost among all the great attempts 
in the learned part of the world. 

The present King of England, of whom we have seen the 
whole world writing panegyrics and encomiums, and whom 
his enemies, when their interest does not silence them, are apt 
to say more of than ourselves ; as in the war he has given sur- 
prising instances of a greatness of spirit more than common, 
so in peace, I dare say, with submission, he shall never have an 
opportunity to illustrate his memory more than by such a foun- 
dation ; by which he shall have opportunity to darken the glory 
of the French King in peace, as he has by his daring attempts 
in the war. 

Nothing but pride loves to be flattered, and that only as 'tis 
a vice which blinds us to our own imperfections. I think princes 
are particularly unhappy in having their good actions magni- 
fied, as their evil actions covered. But King William, who has 
already won praise by the steps of dangerous virtue, seems re- 



AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS 3 

served for some actions which are above the touch of flattery, 
whose praise is in themselves. 

And such would this be; and because I am speaking of a work 
which seems to be proper only for the hand of the King himself, 
I shall not presume to carry on this chapter to the model as I 
have done in other subjects. Only thus far: — 

That a society be erected by the King himself, if his Majesty 
thought fit, and composed of none but persons of the first figure 
in learning; and 'twere to be wished our gentry were so much 
lovers of learning that birth might always be joined with capa- 
city. 

The work of this society should be to encourage polite learn- 
ing, to polish and refine the English tongue, and advance the 
so much neglected faculty of correct language, to establish 
purity and propriety of style, and to purge it from all the irregu- 
lar additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced; 
and all those innovations in speech, if I may call them such, 
which some dogmatic writers have the confidence to foster upon 
their native language, as if their authority were sufficient to 
make their own fancy legitimate. 

By such a society I dare say the true glory of our English 
style would appear, and among all the learned part of the world 
be esteemed, as it really is, the noblest and most comprehen- 
sive of all the vulgar languages in the world. 

Into this society should be admitted none but persons emi- 
nent for learning, and yet none, or but very few, whose business 
or trade was learning. For I may be allowed, I suppose, to say 
we have seen many great scholars, mere learned men, and gradu- 
ates in the last degree of study, whose Enghsh has been far from 
polite, full of stiffness and affectation, hard words, and long un- 
usual coupling of syllables and sentences, which sound harsh 
and untunable to the ear, and shock the reader both in expres- 
sion and understanding. 

In short, there should be room in this society for neither A 
clergyman, physician, or lawyer. Not that I would put an af- 
front upon the learning of any of those honorable employments, 
much less upon their persons. But if I do think that their sev- 
eral professions do naturally and severally prescribe habits of 
speech to them peculiar to their practice, and prejudicial to 
the study I speak of, I believe I do them no wrong. Nor do I 



4 DANIEL DEFOE 

deny but there may be, and now are, among some of all those 
professions, men of style and language, great masters of Eng- 
lish, whom few men will undertake to correct; and where such 
do at any time appear, their extraordinary merit should find 
them a place in this society; but it should be rare, and upon 
very extraordinary occasions, that such be admitted. 

I would therefore have this society wholly composed of gen- 
tlemen, whereof twelve to be of the nobility, if possible, and 
twelve private gentlemen, and a class of twelve to be left open 
for mere merit, let it be found in who or what sort it would, 
which should lie as the crown of their study, who have done 
something eminent to deserve it. The voice of this society 
should be sufficient authority for the usage of words, and suffi- 
cient also to expose the innovations of other men's fancies; 
they should preside with a sort of judicature over the learning 
of the age, and have hberty to correct and censure the exorbi- 
tance of writers, especially of translators. The reputation of 
this society would be enough to make them the allowed judges 
of style and language; and no author would have the impu- 
dence to coin without their authority. Custom, which is now 
our best authority for words, would always have its original 
here, and not be allowed without it. There should be no more 
occasion to search for derivations and constructions, and 
'twould be as criminal then to coin words as money. 

The exercises of this society would be lectures on the English 
tongue, essays on the nature, original, usage, authorities, and 
differences of words, on the propriety, purity, and cadence of 
style, and of the politeness and manner in writing, reflections 
upon irregular usages, and corrections of erroneous customs in 
words; and, in short, everything that would appear necessary 
to the bringing our English tongue to a due perfection, and our 
gentlemen to a capacity of writing like themselves; to banish 
pride and pedantry, and silence the impudence and imperti- 
nence of young authors, whose ambition is to be known, though 
it be by their folly. ... 

^ Under this head of Academies I might bring in a project 
for — 






>JkjL- -U 



AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS 



AN ACADEMY FOR WOMEN 

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous cus- 
toms in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian 
country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. 
We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, 
while I am confident, had they the advantages of education 
equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. 

One would wonder, indeed, how it should happen that wo- 
men are conversible at all, since they are only beholding to nat- 
ural parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach 
them to stitch and sew or make baubles. They are taught to 
read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names or so, and that is 
the height of a woman's education. And I would but ask any 
who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gen- 
tleman, I mean) good for that is taught no more? 

I need not give instances, or examine the character of a gen- 
tleman with a good estate, and of a good family, and with 
tolerable parts, and examine what figure he makes for want of 
education. 

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond ^ and 
must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear: and 'tis 
manifest that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, 
so education carries on the distinction and makes some less 
brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstra- 
tion. But why then should women be denied the benefit of in- 
struction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless 
additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given 
them capacities, for He made nothing needless. Besides, I 
would ask such what they can see in ignorance that they should 
think it a necessary ornament to a woman? or how much worse 
is a wise woman than a fool? or what has the woman done to for- 
feit the privilege of being taught? Does she plague us with her 
pride and im.j iLmence? Why did we not let her learn, that 
she might have had more wit? Shall we upbraid women with 
folly, when 'tis only the error of this inhuman custom that hin- 
dered them being made wiser? 

The capacities of women are supposed to be greater and their 
senses quicker than those of the men; and what they might be 
capable of being bred to is plain from some instances of female 



6 DANIEL DEFOE 

wit, which this age is not without; which upbraids us with in- 
justice, and looks as if we denied women the advantages of 
education for fear they should vie with the men in their im- 
provements. 

To remove this objection, and that women might have at 
least a needful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful 
learning, I propose the draught of an Academy for that pur- 
pose. 

I know 'tis dangerous to make public appearances of the sex. 
They are not either to be confined or exposed ; the first will dis- 
agree with their inclinations, and the last with their reputa- 
tions, and therefore it is somewhat difficult; and I doubt a 
method proposed by an ingenious lady in a little book called 
Advice to the Ladies would be found impracticable, for, saving 
my respect to the sex, the levity, which perhaps is a little pecu- 
liar to them, at least in their youth, will not bear the restraint; 
and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can keep 
up a nunnery. Women are extravagantly desirous of going 
to heaven, and will punish their pretty bodies to get thither; 
but nothing else will do it, and even in that case sometimes it 
falls out that nature will prevail. 

When I talk, therefore, of an academy for women, I mean 
both the model, the teaching, and the government different 
from what is proposed by that ingenious lady, for whose pro- 
posal I have a very great esteem, and also a great opinion of her 
wit; different, too, from all sorts of reHgious confinement, and, 
above all, from vows of celibacy. 

Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little 
from public schools, wherein such ladies as were wilHng to 
study should have all the advantages of learning suitable to 
their genius. 

But since some severities of discipline more than ordinary 
would be absolutely necessary to preserve the reputation of the 
house, that persons of quality and fortune might not be afraid 
to venture their children thither, I shall venture to make a 
small scheme by way of essay. 

The house I would have built in a form by itself, as well as in 
a place by itself. The building should be of three plain fronts, 
without any jettings or bearing-work, that the eye might at 
a glance see from one coin to the other; the gardens walled in 



AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS 7 

the same triangular figure, with a large moat, and but one en- 
trance. • 

When this every part of the situation was contrived as well 
as might be for discovery, and to render intriguing dangerous, 
I would have no guards, no eyes, no spies set over the ladies, 
but shall expect them to be tried by the principles of honor 
and strict virtue. . . . 

In this house, the persons who enter should be taught all sorts 
of breeding suitable to both their genius and their quality; and 
in particular music and dancing, which it would be cruelty to 
bar the sex of, because they are their darlings; but besides this, 
they should be taught languages, as particularly French and 
Itahan; and I would venture the injury of giving a woman more 
tongues than one. 

They should, as a particular study, be taught all the graces 
of speech and all the necessary air of conversation, which our 
common education is so defective in that I need not expose it. 
They should be brought to read books, and especially history, 
and so to read as to make them understand the world, and be 
able to know and judge of things when they hear of them. 

To such whose genius would lead them to it I would deny no 
sort of learning; but the chief thing in general is to cultivate 
the understandings of the sex, that they may be capable of all 
sorts of conversation; that, their parts and judgments being im- 
proved, they may be as profitable in their conversation as they 
are pleasant. 

Women, in my observation, have little or no difference in 
them, but as they are or are not distinguished by education. 
Tempers indeed may in some degree influence them, but the 
main distinguishing part is their breeding. 

The whole sex are generally quick and sharp. I believe I 
may be allowed to say generally so, for you rarely see them 
lumpish and heavy when they are children, as boys will often 
be. If a woman be well bred, and taught the proper manage- 
ment of her natural wit, she proves generally very sensible and 
retentive; and without partiality, a woman of sense and man- 
ners is the finest and most delicate part of God's creation, the 
glory of her Maker, and the great instance of His singular re- 
gard to man. His darling creature, to whom He gave the best 
gift either God could bestow or man receive. And 'tis the sor- 



-^ 



8 DANIEL DEFOE 

didest piece of folly and ingratitude in the world to withhold 
from the s^ the due lustre which the advantages of education 
gives to the natural beauty of their minds. 
^ A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the 
additional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a 
creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of 
sublimer enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversa- 
tion heavenly; she is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, 
wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest 
wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion has no- 
thing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful. 

On the other hand, suppose her to be the very same woman, 
and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows thus: — 

If her temper be good, want of education makes her soft and 
easy. Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her impertinent 
and talkative. Her knowledge, for want of judgment and ex- 
perience, makes her fanciful and whimsical. If her temper be 
bad, want of breeding makes her worse, and she grows haughty, 
insolent, and loud. If she be passionate, want of manners 
makes her termagant and a scold, which is much at one with 
lunatic. If she be proud, want of discretion (which still is breed- 
ing) makes her conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous. And from 
these she degenerates to be turbulent, clangorous, noisy, nasty, 
and the devil. 

Methinks mankind for their own sakes — since, say what 
we will of the women, we all think fit at one time or other to be 
concerned with them — should take some care to breed them 
up to be suitable and serviceable, if they expected no such 
thing as delight from them. Bless us! what care do we take to 
breed up a good horse and to break him well ! and what a value 
do we put upon him when it is done, and all because he should 
be fit for our use! and why not a woman? Since all her orna- 
ments and beauty without suitable behavior is a cheat in na- 
ture, like the false tradesman, who puts the best of his goods 
uppermost, that the buyer may think the rest are of the same 
goodness. 

Beauty of the body, which is the women's glory, seems to be 
now unequally bestowed, and Nature, or rather Providence, to 
lie under some scandal about it, as if 'twas given a woman for 
a snare to men, and so made a kind of a she-devil of her; be- 



AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS 9 

cause, they say, exquisite beauty is rarely given with wit, more 
rarely with goodness of temper, and never at all with modesty. 
And some, pretending to justify the equity of such a distribu- 
tion, will tell us 'tis the effect of the justice of Providence in di- 
viding particular excellencies among all His creatures, share and 
share alike, as it were, that all might for something or other be 
acceptable to one another, else some would be despised. 

I think both these notions false, and yet the last, which has 
the show of respect to Providence, is the worst, for it supposes 
Providence to be indigent and empty, as if it had not where- 
with to furnish all the creatures it had made, but was fain to be 
parsimonious in its gifts, and distribute them by piecemeal for 
fear of being exhausted. 

If I might venture my opinion against an almost universal 
notion, I would say most men mistake the proceedings of Provi- 
dence in this case, and all the world at this day are mistaken in 
their practice about it. And because the assertion is very bold, 
I desire to explain myself. 

That Almighty First Cause which made us all is certainly 
the fountain of excellence, as it is of being, and by an invisible 
influence could have diffused equal qualities and perfections to 
all the creatures it has made, as the sun does its light, without 
the least ebb or diminution to Himself, and has given indeed to 
every individual sufficient to the figure His providence had de- 
signed him in the world. 

I believe it might be defended if I should say that I do sup- 
pose God has given to all mankind equal gifts and capacities in 
that He has given them all souls equally capable, and that the 
whole difference in mankind proceeds either from accidental 
difference in the make of their bodies or from the foolish differ- 
ence of education. 

I. From Accidental Diference in Bodies. I would avoid dis- 
coursing here of the philosophical position of the soul in the 
body. But if it be true, as philosophers do affirm, that the un- 
derstanding and memory is dilated or contracted according to 
the accidental dimensions of the organ through which 'tis con- 
veyed, then, though God has given a soul as capable to me as 
another, yet if I have any natural defect in those parts of the 
body by which the soul should act, I may have the same soul 
infused as another man, and yet he be a wise man and I a very 



lo DANIEL DEFOE 

fool. For example, if a child naturally have a defect in the 
organ of hearing, so that he could never distinguish any sound, 
that child shall never be able to speak or read, though it have 
a soul capable of all the accomplishments in the world. The 
brain is the centre of all the soul's actings, where all the distin- 
guishing faculties of it reside; and 'tis observable a man who 
has a narrow contracted head, in which there is not room for 
the due and necessary operations of nature by the brain, is 
never a man of very great judgment; and that proverb, ''A 
great head and little wit," is not meant by nature, but is a re- 
proof upon sloth, as if one should, by way of wonder, say, "Fie, 
fie! you that have a great head have but little wit; that's 
strange ! that must certainly be your own fault." From this no- 
tion I do believe there is a great matter in the breed of men and 
women — not that wise men shall always get wise children, but 
I believe strong and healthy bodies have the wisest children, 
and sickly, weakly bodies affect the wits as well as the bodies 
of their children. We are easily persuaded to believe this in the 
breeds of horses, cocks, dogs, and other creatures, and I be- 
lieve 'tis as visible in men. 

"^ But to come closer to the business, the great distinguishing 
difference which is seen in the world between men and women 
is in their education, and this is manifested by comparing it 
with the difference between one man or woman and another. 

And herein it is that I take upon me to make such a bold as- 
sertion that all the world are mistaken in their practice about 
women ; for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them 
so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such 
charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls 
capable of the same accomplishments with men, and all to be 
only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves. 

Not that I am for exalting the female government in the 
least; but, in short, I would have men take women for compan- 
ions, and educate them to be fit for it. A woman of sense and 
breeding wiU scorn as much to encroach upon the prerogative 
of the man as a man of sense will scorn to oppress the weakness 
of the woman. But if the women's souls were refined and im- 
proved by teaching, that word would be lost; to say, the weak- 
ness of the sex as to judgment, would be nonsense, for ignor- 
ance and folly would be no more found among women than men. 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS ii 

I remember a passage which I heard from a very fine woman ; 
she had wit and capacity enough, an extraordinary shape and 
face, and a great fortune, but had been cloistered up all her 
time, and, for fear of being stolen, had not had the hberty of be- 
ing taught the common necessary knowledge of women's affairs; 
and when she came to converse in the world, her natural wit 
made her so sensible of the want of education, that she gave 
this short reflection on herself: — "I am ashamed to talk with 
my very maids," says she, "for I don't know when they do 
right or wrong. I had more need go to school than be mar- 
ried." 

I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the 
sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice; 'tis a thing 
will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but 
an essay at the thing, and I refer the practice to those happy 
days, if ever they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to 
mend it. 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS . 

.,V>--^>. ^ ^«-^ VyA/NA^ t 1702 

[This pamphlet was written while a bill was pending in ParHament on 
the subject of "occasional conformity," a practice by which members of 
the Dissenting denominations preserved their poUtical rights by occasion- 
ally attending service at the Church of England. Defoe, a Dissenter, as- 
sumed the position of a violent Tory and High Churchman, his mock at- 
tack on his fellow-religionists being so skilfully devised that it was taken 
seriously and approved by some Tories. When its real character was 
understood, the author was prosecuted for libeling the Church, and the 
book was ordered burned by the House of Commons.] 

Sir Roger L'Estrange tells us a story in his collection of 
fables, of the cock and the horses. The cock was gotten to roost 
in the stable among the horses, and there being no racks or 
other conveniences for him, it seems he was forced to roost 
upon the ground. The horses jostling about for room, and put- 
ting the cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave ad- 
vice, "Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear we should 
tread upon one another." 

There are some people in the world, who, now they are un- 



12 DANIEL DEFOE 

perched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and 
under strong and very just apprehensions of being further 
treated as they deserve, begin, with i^sop's cock, to preach up 
peace and union, and the Christian duties of moderation, for- 
getting that, when they had the power in their hands, these 
graces were strangers in their gates. 

It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the 
purest and most flourishing Church in the world has been 
eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed by a sort of men whom God 
in His providence has suffered to insult over her and bring her 
down. These have been the days of her humiliation and tribu- 
lation. She has borne with invincible patience the reproach of 
the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers, and delivered 
her from the oppression of the stranger. 

And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and 
the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, 
and ever constant member of, and friend to, the Church of 
England. Now they find that they are in danger of the Church 
of England's just resentments; now they cry out Peace, Union, 
Forbearance, and Charity, as if the Church had not too long 
harbored her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viper- 
ous brood till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that 
cherished them! 

No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace 
is over; you should have practiced peace, and moderation, and 
charity, if you expected any yourselves. 

We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We 
have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you 
have told us, that you are the Church established by law, as well 
as others ; have set up your canting synagogues at our church 
doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with re- 
proaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. 
Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you 
have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that 
could not take oaths as fast as you made them? that, having 
sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not 
dispense with their oath, their King being still alive, and swear 
to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government? These have 
been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left 
to starve; their estates double taxed to carry on a war they had 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS 13 

no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you 
give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their 
consciences, with your new sophistical pohtics, who, like new 
converts in France, sin because they cannot starve? And now 
the tables are turned upon you; you must not be persecuted; it 
is not a Christian spirit! 

You have butchered one king, deposed another king, and 
made a mock king of a third, and yet you could have the face 
to expect to be employed and trusted by the fourth. Anybody 
that did not know the temper of your party would stand amazed 
at the impudence, as well as folly, to think of it. 

Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you re- 
duced to a mere King of CI — s, is enough to give any future 
princes such an idea of your principles as to warn them suffi- 
ciently from coming into your clutches; and God be thanked 
the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will have a care 
of you. 

There is no doubt but the supreme authority of a nation has 
in itself a power, and a right to that power, to execute the laws 
upon any part of that nation it governs. The execution of the 
known laws of the land, and that with but a gentle hand neither, 
was all that the fanatical party of this land have ever called 
persecution; this they have magnified to a height, that the suf- 
ferings of the Huguenots in France were not to be compared 
with. Now, to execute the known laws of a nation upon those 
who transgress them, after voluntarily consenting to the mak- 
ing those laws, can never be called persecution, but justice. But 
justice is always violence to the party offending, for every man 
is innocent in his own eyes. The first execution of the laws 
against Dissenters in England was in the days of King James 
the First; and what did it amount to? Truly the worst they suf- 
fered was at their own request : to let them go to New England 
and erect a new colony, and give them great privileges, grants, 
and suitable powers, keep them under protection, and defend 
them against all invaders, and receive no taxes or revenue from 
them. This was the cruelty of the Church of England. Fatal 
lenity ! It was the ruin of that excellent prince. King Charles the 
First. Had King James sent all the Puritans in England away 
to the West Indies, we had been a national, unmixed Church; 
the Church of England had been kept undivided and entire. 



14 DANIEL DEFOE 

To requite the lenity of the father, they take up arms against 
the son; conquer, pursue, take, imprison, and at last put to 
death the anointed of God, and destroy the very being and na- 
ture of government, setting up a sordid impostor, who had nei- 
ther title to govern nor understanding to manage, but supplied 
that want with power, bloody and desperate counsels, and craft 
without conscience. 

Had not King James the First withheld the full execution of 
the laws, had he given them strict justice, he had cleared the 
nation of them, and the consequences had been plain: his son 
had never been murdered by them nor the monarchy over- 
whelmed. It was too much mercy shown them was the ruin of 
his posterity and the ruin of the nation's peace. One would 
think the Dissenters should not have the face to believe that we 
are to be wheedled and canted into peace and toleration, when 
they know that they have once requited us with a civil war, and 
once with an intolerable and unrighteous persecution, for our 
former civility. 

Nay, to encourage us to be easy with them, it is apparent that 
they never had the upper hand of the Church, but they treated 
her with all the severity, with all the reproach and contempt 
as was possible. What peace and what mercy did they show 
the loyal gentry of the Church of England in the time of their 
triumphant Commonwealth? How did they put all the gentry 
of England to ransom, whether they were actually in arms for 
the King or not, making people compound for their estates and 
starve their families? How did they treat the clergy of the 
Church of England, sequestered the ministers, devoured the 
patrimony of the Church, and divided the spoil by sharing the 
Church lands among their soldiers, and turning her clergy out 
to starve? Just such measure as they have meted should be 
measured them again. 

Charity and love is the known doctrine of the Church of 
England, and it is plain she has put it in practice towards the 
Dissenters, even beyond what they ought, till she has been 
wanting to herself, and in effect unkind to her sons, particu- 
larly in the too much lenity of King James the First, men- 
tioned before. Had he so rooted the Puritans from the face of 
the land, which he had an opportunity early to have done, they 
had not had the power to vex the Church as since they have done. 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS 15 

In the days of King Charles the Second, how did the Church 
reward their bloody doings with lenity and mercy, except the 
barbarous regicides of the pretended court of justice! Not a 
soul suffered for all the blood in an unnatural war. King Charles 
came in all mercy and love, cherished them, preferred them, 
employed them, withheld the rigor of the law, and oftentimes, 
even against the advice of his Parliament, gave them liberty of 
conscience; and how did they requite him with the villainous 
contrivance to depose and murder him and his successor at the 
Rye Plot!" 

King James, as if mercy was the inherent quality of the fam- 
ily, began his reign with unusual favor to them. Nor could 
their joining with the Duke of Monmouth against him move 
him to do himself justice upon them; but that mistaken prince 
thought to win them by gentleness and love, proclaimed an uni- 
versal liberty to them, and rather discountenanced the Church 
of England than them. How they requited him all the world 
knows. 

The late reign is too fresh in the memory of all the world 
to need a comment; how, under pretence of joining with the 
Church in redressing some grievances, they pushed things to 
that extremity, in conjunction with some mistaken gentlemen, 
as to depose the late King, as if the grievance of the nation 
could not have been redressed but by the absolute ruin of the 
prince. Here is an instance of their temper, their peace, and 
charity. To what height they carried themselves during the 
reign of a king of their own; how they crope into all places of 
trust and profit; how they insinuated into the favor of the King, 
and were at first preferred to the highest places in the nation; 
how they engrossed the ministry, and above all, how pitifully 
they managed, is too plain to need any remarks. 

But particularly their mercy and charity, the spirit of union, 
they tell us so much of, has been remarkable in Scotland. If 
any man would see the spirit of a Dissenter, let him look into 
Scotland. There they made entire conquest of the Church, 
trampled down the sacred orders, and suppressed the Episco- 
pal government, with an absolute, and, as they suppose, irre- 
trievable victory, though it is possible they may find themselves 
mistaken. Now it would be a very proper question to ask their 
impudent advocate, the Observator, Pray how much mercy 



i6 DANIEL DEFOE 

and favor did the members of the Episcopal Church find in 
Scotland from the Scotch Presbyterian Government? And I 
shall undertake for the Church of England that the Dissenters 
shall still receive as much here, though they deserve but Httle. 

In a small treatise of the sufferings of the Episcopal clergy 
in Scotland, it will appear what usage they met with; how they 
not only lost their livings, but in several places were plundered 
and abused in their persons; the ministers that could not con- 
form turned out with numerous families and no maintenance, 
and hardly charity enough left to relieve them with a bit of 
bread. And the cruelties of the parties are innumerable, and 
not to be attempted in this short piece. 

And now, to prevent the distant cloud which they perceived 
to hang over their heads from England, with a true Presby- 
terian policy, they put in for a union of nations, that England 
might unite their Church with the Kirk of Scotland, and their 
Presbyterian members sit in our House of Commons, and their 
Assembly of Scotch canting Long-Cloaks in our Convocation. 
What might have been if our fanatic Whiggish statesmen con- 
tinued, God only knows ; but we hope we are out of fear of that 
now. 

It is alleged by some of the faction — and they began to 
bully us with it — that if' we won't unite with them, they will 
not settle the crown with us again, but when Her Majesty dies, 
will choose a king for themselves. 

If they won't, we must make them, and it is not the first time 
we have let them know that we are able. The crowns of these 
kingdoms have not so far disowned the right of succession, but 
they may retrieve it again; and if Scotland thinks to come off 
from a successive to an elective state of government, England 
has not promised not to assist the right heir and put them into 
possession, without any regard to their ridiculous settlements. 

These are the gentlemen, these their ways of treating the 
Church, both at home and abroad. Now let us examine the 
reasons they pretend to give why we should be favorable to 
them, why we should continue and tolerate them among us. 

First, they are very numerous, they say; they are a great 
part of the nation, and we cannot suppress them. 

To this may be answered : — 

I. They are not so numerous as the Protestants in France, 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS 17 

and yet the French King effectually cleared the nation of them 
at once, and we don't find he misses them at home. But I am 
not of the opinion they are so numerous as is pretended ; their 
party is more numerous than their persons, and those mistaken 
people of the Church who are misled and deluded by their 
wheedling artifices to join with them, make their party the 
greater; but those will open their eyes when the Government 
shall set heartily about the work, and come off from them, as 
some animals which they say always desert a house when it is 
likely to fall. 

2. The more numerous the more dangerous, and therefore 
the more need to suppress them; and God has suffered us to 
bear them as goads in our sides for not utterly extinguishing 
them long ago. 

3. If we are to allow them only because we cannot suppress 
them, then it ought to be tried whether we can or no ; and I am 
of opinion it is easy to be done, and could prescribe ways and 
means, if it were proper; but I doubt not the Government will 
find effectual methods for the rooting the contagion from the 
face of this land. 

Another argument they use, which is this: that it is a time of 
war, and we have need to unite against the common enemy. 

We answer, this common enemy had been no enemy if they 
had not made him so. He was quiet, in peace, and no way dis- 
turbed or encroached upon us, and we know no reason we had 
to quarrel with him. 

But further, we make no question but we are able to deal 
with this common enemy without their help; but why must 
we unite with them because of the enemy? Will they go over 
to the enemy if we do not prevent it by a union with them? 
We are very well contented they should, and make no question 
we shall be ready to deal with them and the common enemy 
tooj and better without them than with them. 

Besides, if we have a common enemy, there is the more need 
to be secure against our private enemies. If there is one com- 
mon enemy, we have the less need to have an enemy in our 
bowels. 

It was a great argument some people used against suppress- 
ing the old money, that it was a time of war, and it was too 
great a risk for the nation to run; if we should not master it, we 



i8 DANIEL DEFOE 

should be undone. And yet the sequel proved the hazard was 
not so great but it might be mastered, and the success was an- 
swerable. The suppressing the Dissenters is not a harder work, 
nor a work of less necessity to the public. We can never enjoy 
a settled, uninterrupted union and tranquillity in this nation 
till the spirit of Whiggism, faction, and schism is melted down 
like the old money. 

To talk of the difficulty is to frighten ourselves with chimeras 
and notions of a powerful party, which are indeed a party with- 
out power. Difficulties often appear greater at a distance than 
when they are searched into with judgment and distinguished 
from the vapors and shadows that attend them. 

We are not to be frightened with it ; this age is wiser than that, 
by all our experience and theirs too. King Charles the First 
had early suppressed this party if he had taken more deliberate 
measures. In short, it is not worth arguing to talk of their arms. 
Their Monmouths, and Shaftesburys, and Argyles are gone; 
their Dutch sanctuary is at an end; Heaven has made way for 
their destruction; and if we do not close with the divine occa- 
sion, we are to blame ourselves, and may remember that we had 
once an opportunity to serve the Church of England by extir- 
pating her implacable enemies, and, having let slip the minute 
that Heaven presented, may experimentally complain, Post est 
occasio calva} 

Here are some popular objections in the way : — 

As first, the Queen has promised them to continue them in 
their tolerated liberty, and has told us she will be a religious 
observer of her word. 

What Her Majesty will do we cannot help; but what, as the 
head of the Church, she ought to do, is another case. Her Ma- 
jesty has promised to protect and defend the Church of Eng- 
land, and if she cannot effectually do that without the destruc- 
tion of the Dissenters, she must of course dispense with one 
promise to comply with another. But to answer this cavil more 
effectually : Her Majesty did never promise to maintain the tol- 
eration to the destruction of the Church ; but it is upon supposi- 
tion that it may be compatible with the well-being and safety 
of the Church, which she had declared she would take especial 
care of. Now if these two interests clash, it is plain Her Ma- 

1 "Opportunity is bald-headed behind." 



• THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS 19 

Jesty's intentions are to uphold, protect, defend, and establish 
the Church, and this we conceive is impossible. 

Perhaps it may be said that the Church is in no immediate 
danger from the Dissenters, and therefore it is time enough. 
But this is a weak answer. 

For first, if a danger be real, the distance of it is no argument 
against, but rather a spur to quicken us to prevention, lest it be 
too late hereafter. 

And secondly, here is the opportunity, and the only one per- 
haps that ever the Church had, to secure herself and destroy 
her enemies. 

The representatives of the nation have now an opportunity; 
the time is come which all good men have wished for, that the 
gentlemen of England may serve the Church of England ; now 
they are protected and encouraged by a Church of England 
Queen. 

" What will you do for your sister in the day that she shall 
be spoken for? " 

If ever you will establish the best Christian Church in the 
world; if ever you will suppress the spirit of enthusiasm; if 
ever you will free the nation from the viperous brood that have 
so long sucked the blood of their mother; if ever you will 
leave your posterity free from faction and rebellion , this is the 
time! This is the time to pull up this heretical weed of sedition 
that has so long disturbed the peace of our Church and poi- 
soned the good corn. 

But, says another hot and cold objector, this is renewing fire 
and faggot, reviving the act De Heretico Comhurendo; this will 
be cruelty in its nature, and barbarous to all the world. 

I answer, it is cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in cold blood, 
but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our neigh- 
bors to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury re- 
ceived, but for prevention; not for the evil they have done, but 
the evil they may do. 

Serpents, toads, vipers, &c., are noxious to the body, and 
poison the sensitive life; these poison the soul, corrupt our pos- 
terity, ensnare our children, destroy the vitals of our happiness, 
our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass. 

Shall any law be given to such wild creatures? Some beasts 
are for sport, and the huntsmen give them advantages of 



20 DANIEL DEFOE 

ground; but some are knocked on the head by all possible ways 
of violence and surprise. 

I do not prescribe fire and faggot, but, as Scipio said of Car- 
thage, Delenda est Carthago, they are to be rooted out of this 
nation, if ever we will live in peace, serve God, or enjoy our own. 
As for the manner, I leave it to those hands who have a right to 
execute God's justice on the nation's and the Church's enemies. 

But if we must be frighted from this justice under the spe- 
cious pretences and odious sense of cruelty, nothing will be ef- 
fected : it will be more barbarous to our own children and dear 
posterity when they shall reproach their fathers, as we do ours, 
and tell us, "You had an opportunity to root out this cursed 
race from the world, under the favor and protection of a true 
English queen; and out of your foolish pity you spared them, 
because, forsooth, you would not be cruel; and now our Church 
is suppressed and persecuted, our religion trampled under foot, 
our estates plundered, our persons imprisoned and dragged to 
jails, gibbets, and scaffolds: your sparing this Amalekite race is 
our destruction, your mercy to them proves cruelty to your 
poor posterity." 

How just will such reflections be when our posterity shall 
fall under the merciless clutches of this uncharitable genera- 
tion, when our Church shall be swallowed up in schism, faction, 
enthusiasm, and confusion; when our government shall be de- 
volved upon foreigners, and our monarchy dwindled into a re- 
pubKc! 

It would be more rational for us, if we must spare this genera- 
tion, to summon our own to a general massacre, and, as we 
have brought them into the world free, send them out so, and 
not betray them to destruction by our supine negligence, and 
then cry, " It is mercy." 

Moses was a merciful, meek man, and yet with what fury did 
he run through the camp, and cut the throats of three-and- 
thirty thousand of his dear IsraeHtes that were fallen into idola- 
try. What was the reason? It was mercy to the rest to make 
these examples, to prevent the destruction of the whole army. 

How many millions of future souls we save from infection 
and delusion, if the present race of poisoned spirits were purged 
from the face of the land! 

It is vain to trifle in this matter; the light foolish handling of 



THE SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS 21 

them by mulcts, fines, &c., — it is their glory and their advant- 
age. If the gallows instead of the Counter, ^ and the galleys in- 
stead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, to 
preach or hear, there would not be so many sufferers. The spirit 
of martyrdom is over ; they that will go to church to be chosen 
sheriffs and mayors would go to forty churches rather than be 
hanged. 

If one severe law were made and punctually executed, that 
whoever was found at a conventicle should be banished the 
nation, and the preacher be hanged, we should soon see an end 
of the tale. They would all come to church, and one age 
would make us all one again. 

To talk of five shillings a month for not coming to the sacra- 
ment, and one shilling per week for not coming to church, — 
this is such a way of converting people as never was known; 
this is selling them a liberty to transgress for so much money. 
If it be not a crime, why don't we give them full Ucense? And 
if it be, no price ought to compound for the committing it, for 
that is selling a liberty to people to sin against God and the 
government. 

If it be a crime of the highest consequence, both against the 
peace and welfare of the nation, the glory of God, the good of 
the Church, and the happiness of the soul, let us rank it among 
capital offences, and let it receive a punishment in proportion 
to it. 

We hang men for trifles, and banish them for things not worth 
naming; but an offence against God and the Church, against 
the welfare of the world and the dignity of religion, shall be 
bought off for five shillings! This is such a shame to a Chris- 
tian government that it is with regret I transmit it to pos- 
terity. 

If men sin against God, affront His ordinances, rebel against 
His Church, and disobey the precepts of their superiors, let 
them suffer as such capital crimes deserve. So will religion 
flourish, and this divided nation be once again united. . . . 

It is high time, then, for the friends of the Church of England 
to think of building up and establishing her in such a manner 
that she may be no more invaded by foreigners, nor divided by 
factions, schisms, and error. 

1 The city prison. 



22 DANIEL DEFOE 

If this could be done by gentle and easy methods, I should be 
glad; but the wound is corroded, the vitals begin to mortify, and 
nothing but amputation of members can complete the cure; all 
the Ways of tenderness and compassion, all persuasive argu- 
ments, have been made use of in vain. 

The humor of the Dissenters has so increased among the peo- 
ple, that they hold the Church in defiance, and the house of 
God is an abomination among them; nay, they have brought 
up their posterity in such prepossessed aversions to our holy 
religion, that the ignorant mob think we are all idolaters and 
worshipers of Baal, and account it a sin to come within the walls 
of our churches. 

The primitive Christians were not more shy of a heathen 
temple or of meat offered to idols, nor the Jews of swine's flesh, 
than some of our Dissenters are of the Church, and the divine 
service solemnized therein. 

This obstinacy must be rooted out with the profession of it; 
while the generation are left at liberty daily to affront God Al- 
mighty and dishonor His holy worship, we are wanting in our 
duty to God and our mother, the Church of England. 

How can we answer it to God, to the Church, and to our pos- 
terity, to leave them entangled with fanaticism, error, and ob- 
stinacy in the bowels of the nation; to leave them an enemy in 
their streets, that in time may involve them in the same crimes, 
and endanger the utter extirpation of religion in the nation? 

What is the difference betwixt this and being subjected to 
the power of the Church of Rome, from whence we have re- 
formed? If one be an extreme on one hand, and one on another, 
it is equally destructive to the truth to have errors settled 
among us, let them be of what nature they will. 

Both are enemies of our Church and of our peace; and why 
should it not be as criminal to admit an enthusiast as a Jesuit? 
Why should the Papist with his seven sacraments be worse 
than the Quaker with no sacraments at all? Why should reli- 
gious houses be more intolerable than meeting-houses? Alas, 
the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and 
schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between 
two thieves! 

Now let us crucify the thieves. Let her foundations be estab- 
lished upon the destruction of her enemies. The doors of mercy 



THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL 23 

being always open to the returning part of the deluded people, 
let the obstinate be ruled with the rod of iron. 

Let all true sons of so holy and oppressed a mother, exasper- 
ated by her afHictions, harden their hearts against those who 
have oppressed her. 

And may God Almighty put it into the hearts of all the friends 
of truth to Hft up a standard against pride and Antichrist, that 
the posterity of the sons of error may be rooted out from the 
face of this land for ever. 



A TRUE RELATION OF THE APPARITION OF 
ONE MRS. VEAL 

THE NEXT DAY AFTER HER DEATH, TO ONE MRS. BAR- 
GRAVE, AT CANTERBURY, THE EIGHTH OF SEPTEMBER, 
1705 

1706 

[This is one of Defoe 's earliest experiments in fiction, and illustrates his 
usual habit of making his narrative writings so circumstantial in detail "> 
as to assume the appearance of veracious chronicle. It was formerly sup- 
posed that one object of the pamphlet was to increase the sale of Drelin- 
court's book on Death; this has been disproved, but Defoe's narrative 
was reprinted in some editions of Dr elincou rt's work, as a testimony to 
its worth. 1 

THE PREFACE 

This relation is matter of fact, and attended with such cir- 
cumstances as may induce any reasonable man to beheve it. 
It was sent by a gentleman, a justice of peace at JMaidstone, in 
Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London, as 
it is here worded; which discourse is attested by a very sober 
and understanding gentlewoman and kinswoman of the said 
gentleman's, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of 
the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who 
believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit, as not 
to be put upon by any fallacy, and who positively assured 
him that the whole matter as it is here related and laid down 
is really true, and what she herself had in the same words, 
as near as may be, from Mrs. Ba,rgrave's own mouth, who, 
she knows, had no reason to invent and publish such a story, 



24 DANIEL DEFOE 

nor any design to forge and tell a lie, being a woman of much 
honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of 
piety. The use which we ought to make of it is to consider 
that there is a life to come after this, and a just God who will 
retribute to every one according to the deeds done in the body, 
and therefore to reflect upon our past course of life we have led 
in the world; that our time is short and uncertain; and that if 
we would escape the punishment of the ungodly and receive 
the reward of the righteous, which is the laying hold of eter- 
nal life, we ought, for the time to come, to return to God by 
a speedy repentance, ceasing to do evil, and learning to do 
well; to seek after God early, if haply He may be found of us, 
and lead such lives for the future as may be well pleasing in 
His sight. 

This thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and on so good 
authority, that my reading and conversation has not given me 
anything like it. It is fit to gratify the most ingenious and se- 
rious inquirer. Mrs. Bargrave is the person to whom Mrs. Veal 
appeared after her death; she is my intimate friend, and I can 
avouch for her reputation for these last fifteen or sixteen years, 
on my own knowledge; and I can confirm the good character 
she had from her youth to the time of my acquaintance; though 
since this relation she is calumniated by some people that are 
friends to the brother of Mrs. Veal who appeared, who think 
the relation of this appearance to be a reflection, and endeavor 
what they can to blast Mrs. Bargrave's reputation, and to laugh 
the story out of countenance. But by the circumstances there- 
of, and the cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstand- 
ing the unheard-of ill-usage of a very wicked husband, there is 
not the least sign of dejection in her face; nor did I ever hear her 
let fall a desponding or murmuring expression; nay, not when 
actually under her husband's barbarity, which I have been 
witness to, and several other persons of undoubted reputation. 

Now you must know Mrs. Veal was a maiden gentlewoman 
of about thirty years of age, and for some years last past had 
been troubled with fits, which were perceived coming on her by 
her going off from her discourse very abruptly to some imperti- 
nence. She was maintained by an only brother, and kept his 
house in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and her bro- 



THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL 25 

ther a very sober man, to all appearance; but now he does all he 
can to null or quash the story. Mrs. Veal was intimately ac- 
quainted with Mrs. Bargrave from her childhood. Mrs. Veal's 
circumstances were then mean ; her father did not take care of 
his children as he ought, so that they were exposed to hardships; 
and Mrs. Bargrave in those days had as unkind a father, though 
she wanted neither for food nor clothing, whilst Mrs. Veal 
wanted for both; so that it was in the power of Mrs. Bar- 
grave to be very much her friend in several instances, which 
mightily endeared Mrs. Veal ; insomuch that she would often 
say, " Mrs. Bargrave, you are not only the best, but the only 
friend I have in the world ; and no circumstance in life shall 
ever dissolve my friendship." They would often condole each 
other's adverse fortunes, and read together Drelincourt U_pon 
Death, and other good books; and so, like two Christian friends, 
they comforted each other under their sorrow. 

Some time after, Mr. Veal's friends got him a place in the cus- 
tom-house at Dover, which occasioned Mrs. Veal, by little and 
little, to fall off from her intimacy with Mrs. Bargrave, though 
there never was any such thing as a quarrel; but an indiffer- 
ency came on by degrees, till at last Mrs. Bargrave had not seen 
her in two years and a half; though about a twelve-month of the 
time Mrs. Bargrave had been absent from Dover, and this last 
half-year had been in Canterbury about two months of the 
time, dwelling in a house of her own. 

In this house, on the 8th of September last, viz., 1705, she was 
sitting alone, in the forenoon, thinking over her unfortunate life, 
and arguing herself into a due resignation to Providence, though 
her condition seemed hard. " And," said she, " I have been pro- 
vided for hitherto, and doubt not but I shall be still; and am 
well satisfied that my afflictions shall end when it is most fit for 
me"; and then she took up her sewing-work, which she had no 
sooner done but she hears a knocking at the door. She went to 
see who was there, and this proved to be Mrs. Veal, her old 
friend, who was in a riding-habit; at that moment of time the 
clock struck twelve at noon. 

" Madam," said Mrs. Bargrave, "' I am surprised to see you, 
you have been so long a stranger"; but told her she was glad to 
see her, and offered to salute her, which Mrs. Veal complied 
with, till their lips almost touched; and then Mrs. Veal drew 



26 DANIEL DEFOE 

her hand across her own eyes and said, " I am not very well," 
and so waived it. She told Mrs. Bargrave she was going a jour- 
ney, and had a great mind to see her first. "But," says Mrs. 
Bargrave, " how came you to take a journey alone? I am amazed 
at it, because I know you have so fond a brother." " Oh," says 
Mrs. Veal, "I gave my brother the slip, and came away, be- 
cause I had so great a desire to see you before I took my jour- 
ney." So Mrs. Bargrave went in with her into another room 
within the first, and Mrs. Veal set her down in an elbow-chair, 
in which Mrs. Bargrave was sitting when she heard Mrs. Veal 
knock. Then says Mrs. Veal, " My dear friend, I am come to 
renew our old friendship again, and beg your pardon for my 
breach of it; and if you can forgive me, you are one of the best 
of women." " Oh," says Mrs. Bargrave, "don't mention such a 
thing. I have not had an uneasy thought about it; I can easily 
forgive it." " What did you think of me ? " said Mrs. Veal. Says 
Mrs. Bargrave, " I thought you were like the rest of the world, 
and that prosperity had made you forget yourself and me." 
Then Mrs. Veal reminded Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly 
ofl5ces she did in her former days, and much of the conversa- 
tion they had with each other in the times of their adversity; 
what books they read, and what comfort in particular they re- 
ceived from Drelincourt's Book of Death, which was the best, 
she said, on that subject ever wrote. She also mentioned Dr. 
Sherlock, the two Dutch books which were translated, wrote 
upon Death, and several others; but Drelincourt, she said, had 
the clearest notions of death and the future state of any who 
had handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs. Bargrave whe- 
ther she had Drelincourt. She said, "Yes." Says Mrs. Veal, 
" Fetch it." And so Mrs. Bargrave goes upstairs and brings it 
down. Says Mrs. Veal, " Dear Mrs. Bargrave, if the eyes of our 
faith were as open as the eyes of our body, we should see num- 
bers of angels about us for our guard. The notions we have of 
heaven now are nothing like what it is, as Drelincourt says. 
Therefore be comforted under your afflictions, and believe that 
the Almighty has a particular regard to you, and that your 
afflictions are marks of God's favor; and when they have done 
the business they are sent for, they shall be removed from you. 
And believe me, my dear friend, believe what I say to you, one 
minute of future happiness will infinitely reward you for all 



THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL '27 

your suflferings; for I can never believe" (and claps her hand 
upon her knee with great earnestness, which indeed ran 
through most of her discourse) "that ever God will suffer you 
to spend all your days in this afflicted state; but be assured 
that your afflictions shall leave you, or you them, in a short 
time." She spake in that pathetical and heavenly manner 
that Mrs. Bargrave wept several times, she was so deeply 
affected with it. 

Then Mrs. Veal mentioned Dr. Horneck's Ascetic, at the end 
of which he gives an account of the lives of the primitive Chris- 
tians. Their pattern she recommended to our imitation, and 
said their conversation was not like this of our age; "for now," 
says she, "there is nothing but frothy, vain discourse, which is 
far different from theirs. Theirs was to edification, and to 
build one another up in faith, so that they were not as we are, 
nor are we as they were; but," said she, "we might do as 
they did. There was a hearty friendship among them; but 
where is it now to be found? " Says Mrs. Bargrave, " It is hard 
indeed to find a true friend in these days. " Says Mrs. Veal, 
"Mr. Norris has a fine copy of verses, called Friendship in 
Perfection, which I wonderfully admire. Have you seen the 
book?" says Mrs. Veal. "No," says Mrs. Bargrave, "but I 
have the verses of my own writing out." "Have you?" says 
Mrs. Veal; "then fetch them." Which she did from above- 
stairs, and offered them to Mrs. Veal to read, who refused, and 
waived the thing, saying holding down her head would make 
it ache; and then desired Mrs. Bargrave to read them to her, 
which she did. As they were admiring Friendship Mrs. Veal 
said, "Dear Mrs. Bargrave, I shall love you for ever." In these 
verses there is twice used the word Elysian. "Ah!" says Mrs. 
Veal, "these poets have such names for heaven!" She would 
often draw her hand across her own eyes and say, "Mrs. Bar- 
grave, do not you think I am mightily impaired by my fits?" 
"No," sa3^s Mrs. Bargrave, "I think you look as wefl as ever I 
knew you." 

After all this discourse, which the apparition put in much 
finer words than Mrs. Bargrave said she could pretend to, and 
as much more than she can remember (for it cannot be thought 
that an hour and three-quarters' conversation could be re- 
tained, though the main of it she thinks she does), she said to 



28 DANIEL DEFOE 

Mrs. Bargrave she would have her write a letter to her brother, 
and tell him she would have him give rings to such and such, 
and that there was a purse of gold in her cabinet, and that she 
would have two broad pieces given to her cousin Watson. 

Talking at this rate, Mrs. Bargrave thought that a fit was 
coming upon her, and so placed herself in a chair just before 
her knees, to keep her from falling to the ground, if her fits 
should occasion it (for the elbow-chair, she thought, would 
keep her from falling on either side); and to divert Mrs. 
Veal, as she thought, took hold of her gown-sleeve several 
times, and commended it. Mrs. Veal told her it was a scoured 
silk, and newly made up. But for all this, Mrs. Veal persisted 
in her request, and told Mrs. Bargrave that she must not 
deny her, and she would have her tell her brother all their 
conversation when she had an opportunity. " Dear Mrs. 
Veal," said Mrs. Bargrave, " this seems so impertinent that 
I cannot tell how to comply with it; and what a mortify- 
ing story will our conversation be to a young gentleman!" 
"Well,"saysMrs. Veal, "I must not be denied." ''Why," 
says Mrs. Bargrave, " it is much better, methinks, to do it your- 
self." " No," says Mrs. Veal, " though it seems impertinent to 
you now, you will see more reason for it hereafter." Mrs. 
Bargrave then, to satisfy her importunity, was going to fetch 
a pen and ink, but Mrs. Veal said, " Let it alone now, and do it 
when I am gone; but you must be sure to do it"; which was 
one of the last things she enjoined her at parting. And so 
she promised her. 

Then Mrs. Veal asked for Mrs. Bargrave's daughter. She 
said she was not at home. " But if you have a mind to see her," 
says Mrs. Bargrave, "I'll send for her." "Do," says Mrs. 
Veal. On which she left her, and went to a neighbor's to send for 
her; and by the time Mrs. Bargrave was returning, Mrs. Veal 
was got without the door into the street, in the face of the beast- 
market, on a Saturday (which is market-day), and stood ready 
to part. As soon as Mrs. Bargrave came to her, she asked her 
why she was in such haste. She said she must be going, though 
perhaps she might not go her journey until Monday; and told 
Mrs. Bargrave she hoped she should see her again at her cousin 
Watson's before she went whither she was going. Then she 
said she would take her leave of her, and walked from Mrs. Bar- 



THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL 29 

grave in her view, till a turning interrupted the sight of her, 
which was three-quarters after one in the afternoon. 

Mrs. Veal died the 7th of September, at twelve o'clock at 
noon, of her fits, and had not above four hours' sense before 
death, in which time she received the sacrament. The next day 
after Mrs. Veal's appearing, being Sunday, Mrs. Bargrave was 
so mightily indisposed with a cold and a sore throat, that she 
could not go out that day; but on Monday morning she sent a 
person to Captain Watson's to know if Mrs. Veal was there. 
They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry, and sent her word 
that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer, Mrs. 
Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name or 
made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her 
hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's, though she knew 
none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They 
said they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in 
town; they were sure, if she had, she would have been there. 
Says Mrs. Bargrave, " I am sure she was with me on Saturday 
almost two hours." They said it was impossible; for they must 
have seen her, if she had. In comes Captain Watson while they 
are in dispute, and said that Mrs. Veal was certainly dead, and 
her escutcheons were making. This strangely surprised Mrs. 
Bargrave, when she sent to the person immediately who had 
the care of them, and found it true. Then she related the whole 
story to Captain Watson's family, and what gown she had on, 
and how striped, and that Mrs. Veal told her it was scoured. 
Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "You have seen her indeed, for 
none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was 
scoured." And Mrs. Watson owned that she described the 
gown exactly; "for," said she, "I helped her to make it up." 
This Mrs. Watson blazed all about the town, and avouched the 
demonstration of the truth of Mrs. Bargrave's seeing Mrs, 
Veal's apparition; and Captain Watson carried two gentlemen 
immediately to Mrs. Bargrave's house to hear the relation from 
her own mouth. And when it spread so fast that gentlemen and 
persons of quality, the judicious and skeptical part of the world, 
flocked in upon her, it at last became such a task that she was 
forced to go out of the way; for they were in general extremely 
satisfied of the truth of the thing, and plainly saw that Mrs. 
Bargrave was no hypochondriac, for she always appears with 



30 DANIEL DEFOE 

such a cheerful air and pleasing mien, that she has gained the 
favor and esteem of all the gentry, and it is thought a great 
favor if they can but get the relation' from her own mouth. I 
should have told you before that Mrs. Veal told Mrs. Bargrave 
that her sister and brother-in-law were just come down from 
London to see her. Says Mrs. Bargrave, "How came you to 
order matters so strangely?" " It could not be helped," says 
Mrs. Veal. And her brother and sister did come to see her, and 
entered the town of Dover just as Mrs. Veal was expiring. Mrs. 
Bargrave asked her whether she would drink some tea. Says 
Mrs. Veal, "I do not care if I do; but I'll warrant this mad 
fellow" (meaning Mrs. Bargrave's husband) "has broke all 
your trinkets." "But," says Mrs. Bargrave, "I '11 get some- 
thing to drink in, for all that." But Mrs. Veal waived it, and 
said, " It is no matter; let it alone"; and so it passed. 

All the time I sat with Mrs. Bargrave, which was some hours, 
she recollected fresh sayings of Mrs. Veal. And one material 
thing more she told Mrs. Bargrave — that old Mr. Breton al- 
lowed Mrs. Veal ten pounds a year, which was a secret, and un- 
known to Mrs. Bargrave till Mrs. Veal told it her. Mrs. Bar- 
grave never varies in her story, which puzzles those who doubt 
of the truth or are unwilHng to believe it. A servant in the 
neighbor's yard adjoining to Mrs. Bargrave's house heard her 
talking to somebody an hour of the time Mrs. Veal was with her. 
Mrs. Bargrave went out to her next neighbor's the very mo- 
ment she parted with Mrs. Veal, and told her what ravishing 
conversation she had with an old friend, and told the whole of 
it. Drelincourt's Book of Death is, since this happened, bought 
up strangely. And it is to be observed that, notwithstanding 
all the trouble and fatigue Mrs. Bargrave has undergone upon 
this account, she never took the value of a farthing, nor suffered 
her daughter to take anything of anybody, and therefore can 
have no interest in telling the story. 

But Mr. Veal does what he can to stifle the matter, and said 
he would see Mrs. Bargrave; but yet it is certain matter of fact 
that he has been at Captain Watson's since the death of his 
sister, and yet never went near Mrs. Bargrave; and some of his 
friends report her to be a liar, and that she knew of Mr. Bre- 
ton's ten pounds a year. But the person who pretends to say 
so has the reputation of a notorious liar among persons whom I 



THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL 31 

know to be of undoubted credit. Now, Mr. Veal is more of a 
gentleman than to say she lies, but says a bad husband has 
crazed her. But she needs only present herself and it will ef- 
fectually confute that pretence. Mr. Veal says he asked his sis- 
ter on her death-bed whether she had a mind to dispose of any- 
thing, and she said no. Now, the things which Mrs. Veal's ap- 
parition would have disposed of were so trifling, and nothing of 
justice aimed at in their disposal, that the design of it appears 
to me to be only in order to make Mrs. Bargrave so to demon- 
strate the truth of her appearance, as to satisfy the world of the 
reality thereof as to what she had seen and heard, and to secure 
her reputation among the reasonable and understanding part 
of mankind. And then again Mr. Veal owns that there was a 
purse of gold ; but it was not found in her cabinet, but in a comb- 
box. This looks improbable; for that Mrs. Watson owned that 
Mrs. Veal was so very careful of the key of the cabinet that she 
would trust nobody with it; and if so, no doubt she would not 
trust her gold out of it. And Mrs. Veal's often drawing her 
hand over her eyes, and asking Mrs. Bargrave whether her fits 
had not impaired her, looks to me as if she did it on purpose to 
remind Mrs. Bargrave of her fits, to prepare her not to think it 
strange that she should put her upon writing to her brother to 
dispose of rings and gold, which looks so much like a dying 
person's request; and it took accordingly with Mrs. Bargrave, 
as the effects of her fits coming upon her; and was one of the 
many instances of her wonderful love to her and care of her that 
she should not be affrighted, which indeed appears in her whole 
management, particularly in her coming to her in the daytime, 
waiving the salutation, and when she was alone, and then the 
manner of her parting, to prevent a second attempt to salute 
her. 

Now, why Mr. Veal should think this relation a reflection, as 
it is plain he does by his endeavoring to stifle it, I can't im- 
agine, because the generality believe her to be a good spirit, her 
discourse was so heavenly. Her two great errands were to com- 
fort Mrs. Bargrave in her affliction, and to ask her forgiveness 
for the breach of friendship, and with a pious discourse to en- 
courage her. So that after all to suppose that Mrs. Bargrave 
could hatch such an invention as this from Friday noon to Sat- 
urday noon, supposing that she knew of Mrs. Veal's death the 



32 DANIEL DEFOE 

very first moment, without jumbling circumstances, and with- 
out any interest too, she must be more witty, fortunate, and 
wicked too, than any indifferent person, I dare say, will allow. 
I asked Mrs. Bargrave several times if she was sure she felt the 
gown. She answered modestly, " If my senses are to be relied 
on, I am sure of it." I asked her if she heard a sound when she 
clapped her hand upon her knee. She said she did not remember 
she did, and she said, " She appeared to be as much a substance 
as I did, who talked with her. And I may," said she, " be as soon 
persuaded that your apparition is talking to me now as that I 
did not really see her; for I was under no manner of fear, and 
received her as a friend, and parted with her as such. I would 
not," says she, " give one farthing to make any one believe it; I 
have no interest in it. Nothing but trouble is entailed upon me 
for a long time, for aught I know; and had it not come to light 
by accident, it would never have been made public." But now 
she says she will make her own private use of it, and keep her- 
self out of the way as much as she can; and so she has done 
since. She says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to 
her to hear the relation, and that she had told it to a room full 
of people at a time. Several particular gentlemen have had the 
story from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth. 

This thing has very much affected me, and I am as well satis- 
fied as I am of the best grounded matter of fact. And why we 
should dispute matter of fact because we cannot solve things 
of which we have no certain or demonstrative notions, seems 
strange to me. Mrs. Bargrave's authority and sincerity alone 
would have been undoubted in any other case. 



A SEASONABLE WARNING AND CAUTION 

against the insinuations of papists and jacobites 
"in favor of the pretender 

I712 

[The pamphlets represented by this and the following extract were 
written at a time when it was feared that the succession of the House of 
Hanover to the throne was threatened, in the event of Queen Anne's 
death, by the loyalty of the Jacobite party to the House of Stuart. The 
Seasonable Warning and Caution was a direct appeal, — though purport- 



A SEASONABLE WARNING 33 

ing to be "a letter from an Englishman at the Court of Hanover," — and 
its conclusion is one of the best examples of Defoe 's garrulous eloquence. 
What if the Pretender should Come, on the other hand, exempUfies his bril- 
liant ironical method; it is one of two tracts whose titles were intended 
to delude the unsuspecting Jacobite reader, the other being called Reasons 
against the Succession of the House of Hanover.] 

THE CONCLUSION 

Consider, then, honest countrymen and Protestants, what 
you are doing; look on your families; consider your innocent 
children, who you are going to give up to be bred in abominable 
superstition and idolatry; look on your dear country, which you 
are preparing to make the sea of war, blood, and confusion; look 
on your neighbors, who, while they are resisting this inunda- 
tion, — for you may be assured honest men will resist it to the 
last, — you are to fight with, whose throats you must cut, and 
in whose blood you must dip your hands; and lastly, consider 
yourselves; how free, how quiet, how in peace, plenty and in 
Protestant Kberty you live, but are with your own hands pulling 
down upon you, so far as you entertain thoughts of the Pre- 
tender, the walls of your own security, viz., the constitution, 
and making way for your French popish enemies to enter; to 
whom your religion, your liberties, your estates, your families, 
and your posterity, shall be made a sacrifice, and this flourish- 
ing nation be entirely ruined. 

In the last place, all that have any concern left for the good 
of their country, and for the preserving the Protestant religion, 
will remember how much it is in the power of the people of Brit- 
ain for ever to discourage all the attempts to be made in favor 
of these popish enemies, and to overthrow them in the execu- 
tion; and it is on this foundation that this paper is made public. 
The late letter from Douay, written by some of that side, who 
very well understood the Pretender's true interest, acknow- 
ledges this, and that if the people of England could not be 
wheedled and deluded into the design, it was never to be done 
by force. 

And is this your case, Britons! Will you be ruined by a peo- 
ple whom you ought to despise? Have they not been twenty 
years trying your strength, till they find it impossible for them 
to master you? And are they brought to such a condition as to 
use all their arts and shifts to bring on a peace? and will you be 



34 DANIEL DEFOE 

brought now, in cool thoughts, to do that yourselves which you 
would never let them do, and which, without your most stupid 
negligence of yourselves, they could never do? 

For this reason, I say, these lines are written, and this makes 
them just, and the argument rational. If I were to move you 
to what was not in your power, I should easily be answered 
by being told you could not do it; that you were not able, and 
the like; but is it not evident that the unanimous appearance 
of the people of Great Britain against the Pretender would at 
once render all the party desperate, and make them look upon 
the design as utterly impracticable? As their only hope is in 
the breaches they are making in your resolutions, so if they 
should see they gain no ground there, they would despair, and 
give it over. 

It would not be worth notice to inquire who are and who are 
not for the Pretender; the invidious search into the conduct of 
great men, ministers of state and government, would be labor 
lost: no ministry will ever be for the Pretender, if they once 
may but be convinced that the people are steady; that he gets 
no ground in the country; that the aversions of the common 
people to his person and his government are not to be over- 
come: but if you, the good people of England, slacken your 
hands; if you give up the cause; if you abate your zeal for your 
own liberties, and for the Protestant religion; if you fall in with 
Popery and a French Pretender; if you forget the Revolution, 
and King William, what can you expect? who can stand by you 
then? Who can save them that will destroy themselves? 

The work is before you; your deliverance, your safety is in 
your own hands, and therefore these things are now written. 
None can give you up; none can betray you but yourselves; and 
if you could see your own happiness, it is entirely in your power, 
by unanimous, steady adhering to your old principles, to se- 
cure your peace for ever. O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 



IF THE PRETENDER SHOULD COME 35 



AND WHAT IF THE PRETENDER SHOULD COME? 

OR SOME CONSIDERATIONS OF THE ADVANTAGES AND 
REAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PRETENDER'S POSSESS- 
ING THE CROWN OF GREAT BRITAIN 

I7I3 

. . . That then a case so popular, and of so much conse- 
quence as this is, may not want such due supports as the na- 
ture of the thing will allow, and especially since the advantages 
and good consequences of the thing itself are so many, and so 
easy to be seen, as his friends allege; why should not the good 
people of Britain be made easy, and their fears be turned into 
peaceable satisfaction, by seeing that this devil may not be so 
black as he is painted ; and that the noise made of the Preten- 
der, and the frightful things said of his coming, and of his being 
received here, may not be made greater scarecrows to us than 
they really are; and after all that has been said, if it should ap- 
pear that the advantages of the Pretender's succession are really 
greater to us, and the dangers less to us, than those of the suc- 
cession of Hanover, then much of their difficulties would be 
over, who, standing neuter as .to persons, appear against the 
Pretender only because they are made to believe strange and 
terrible things of what shall befall the nation in case of his com- 
ing in, such as Popery, slavery, French power, destroying of our 
credit, and devouring our funds (as that scandalous scribbler, 
the Review,^ has been laboring to suggest), with many other 
things which we shall endeavor to expose to you as they de- 
serve. . . . 

To begin, then, with that most popular and affrighting argu- 
ment now made use of, as the bugbear of the people, against 
several other things besides Jacobitism, we mean French great- 
ness. It is most evident that the fear of this must, by the na- 
ture of the thing, be effectually removed upon our receiving 
the Pretender. The grounds and reasons why French greatness 
is rendered formidable to us, and so much weight supposed to 
be in it, that, like the name of Scanderbeg, we fright our very 
children with it, lie only in this, that we suggest the King of 

* Defoe's own journal. 



36 DANIEL DEFOE 

France, being a professed enemy to the peace and liberty of 
Great Britain, will most certainly, as soon as he can a little re- 
cover himself, exercise all that formidable power to put the Pre- 
tender upon us, and not only to place him upon the throne of 
Great Britain, but to maintain and hold him up in it, against 
all the opposition, either of the people of Britain or the confed- 
erate princes leagued with the Elector of Hanover, who are in 
the interest of his claim or of his party. Now it is evident that 
upon a peaceable admitting this person, whom they call the Pre- 
tender, to receive and enjoy the crown here, all that formidable 
power becomes your friend, and the being so must necessarily 
take off from it everything that is called terrible. . . . 

How strange is it that none of our people have yet thought 
of this way of securing their native country from the insults of_ 
France! Were but the Pretender once received as our king, we 
have no more disputes with the King of France, he has no pre- 
tence to invade or disturb us; what a quiet world would it be 
with us in such a case, when the greatest monarch in the uni- 
verse should be our fast friend, and be in our interest to prevent 
any of the inconveniences which might happen to us from the 
disgust of other neighbors, who maybe dissatisfied with us upon 
other accounts. As to the terrible things which some people 
fright us and themselves with, from the influence which French 
councils may have upon us, and of French methods of govern- 
ment being introduced among us, these we ought to esteem only 
clamors and noise, raised by a party to amuse and affright us. 
For pray let us inquire a little into them, and see if there be any 
reason for us to be so terrified at them ; suppose they were really 
what is alleged, which we hope they are not; for example, the 
absolute dominion of the King of France over his subjects is 
such, say our people, as makes them miserable; well, but let us 
examine then: are we not already miserable for want of this 
absolute dominion? Are we not miserably divided? Is not our 
government miserably weak? Are we not miserably subjected 
to the rabbles and mob? Nay, is not the very crown mobbed 
here every now and then, into whatever our sovereign lord the 
people demand? Whereas, on the contrary, we see France en- 
tirely united as one man; no virulent scribblers there dare af- 
front the government; no impertinent P ments there dis- 
turb the monarch with their addresses and representations; no 



IF THE PRETENDER SHOULD COME 37 

superiority of laws restrain the administration ; no insolent law- 
yers talk of the sacred constitution, in opposition to the more 
sacred prerogative; but all with harmony and general consent 
agree to support the majesty of their prince, and with their lives 
and fortunes; not in complimenting sham addresses only, but 
in reality and effectually, support the glory of their great mon- 
arch. In doing this they are all united together so firmly, as if 
they had but one heart and one mind, and that the king was 
the soul of the nation. What if they are what we foolishly call 
slaves to the absolute will of their prince? That slavery to 
them is mere liberty. They entertain no notion of that foolish 
liberty which we make so much noise about, nor have they any 
occasion of it, or any use for it if they had it. They are as in- 
dustrious in trade, as vigorous in pursuit of their affairs, go on 
with as much courage, and are as well satisfied when they have 
wrought hard twenty or thirty years to get a little money for 
the king to take away, as we are to get it for our wives and chil- 
dren; and as they plant vines and plough lands, that the king 
and his great men may eat the fruit thereof, they think it as 
great a felicity as if they eat it themselves. ... Is it not ap- 
parent that, under all the oppressions they talk so much of, the 
French are the nation the most improved and increased in 
manufactures, in navigation, in commerce, within these fifty 
years, of any nation in the world? And here we pretend liberty, 
property, constitutions, rights of subjects, and such stuff as 
that, and with all these fine gewgaws, which we pretend propa- 
gate trade and increase the wealth of the nation, we are every 
day declining, and become poor. How long will this nation be 
blinded by their own foolish customs? And when will they learn\ 
to know that the absolute government of a virtuous prince, 
who makes the good of his people his ultimate end, and es- 
teems their prosperity his glory, is the best and most godlike 
government in the world? 

Let us then be no more rendered uneasy with the notions that 
with the Pretender we must entertain French methods of gov- 
ernment, such as tyranny and arbitrary power. Tyranny is no 
more tyranny, when improved for the subjects' advantage: per- 
haps when we have tried it we may find it as much for our good 
many ways, nay, and more too, than our present exorbitant 
liberties, especially unless we can make a better use of them, 



38 DANIEL DEFOE 

and enjoy them, without being always going by the ears about 
them, as we see daily, not only with our governors, but even 
with one another. A little French slavery, though it be a fright- 
ful word among us, — that is, being made so by custom, — yet 
, may do us a great deal of good in the main, as it may teach us 
not to over (under) value our liberties when we have them, so 
much as sometimes we have done; and this is not one of the 
least advantages which we shall gain by the coming of the Pre- 
tender. . . . 

There seems to be but one thing more which those people 
who make such a clamor at the fears of the Pretender, take hold 
of, and this is religion; and they tell us that not only French 
government, and French influence, but French religion, that is 
to say Popery, will come upon us. But these people know not 
what they talk of, for it is evident that they shall be so far from 
being loaded with religion, that they will rather obtain that so 
long desired happiness of having no religion at all. This we 
may easily make appear has been the advantage which has been 
long labored for in this nation; and as the attainments we are 
arrived to of that kind are very considerable already, so we 
cannot doubt but that, if once the Pretender were settled 
quietly among us, an absolute subjection, as well of religious 
principles as civil liberties, to the disposal of the sovereign, 
would take place. This is an advantage so fruitful of several 
other manifest improvements, that though we have not room 
enough in this place to enlarge upon the particulars, we cannot 
doubt but it must be a most grateful piece of news to a great 
part of the nation, who have long groaned under the oppres- 
sions and cruel severities of the clergy, occasioned by their 
own strict lives and rigorous virtue, and their imposing such 
austerities and restraints upon the people ; and in this particu- 
lar the clamor of slavery will appear very scandalous in the 
nation, for, the slavery of religion being taken off, and an 
universal freedom of vice being introduced, what greater lib- 
erty can we enjoy? . . . 

But we have more and greater advantages of the coming of 
the Pretender, and such as no question will invite you to re- 
ceive him with great satisfaction and applause; and it cannot 
be necessary to inform you, for your direction in other cases, 
how the matter, as to real and imaginary advantage, stands 



IF THE PRETENDER SHOULD COME 39 

with the nation in this affair. And first, the coming of the Pre- 
tender will at once put us all out of debt. These abomination 
WHigs, and these bloody wars, carried on so long for little or 
nothing, have, as is evident to our senses now (whatever it was 
all along), brought a heavy debt upon the nation; so that if 
what a known author lately published is true, the government 
pays now almost six millions a year to the common people for 
interest of money; that is to say, the usurers eat up the nation, 
and devour six millions yearly; which is paid, and must be paid 
now for a long time, if some kind turn, such as this of the com- 
ing of the Pretender, or such like, does not help us out of it. 
The weight of this is not only great, insuperably great, but 
most of it is entailed for a terrible time, not only for our age, 
but beyond the age of our grandchildren, even for ninety-nine 
years. By how much the consideration of this debt is intoler- 
able and afflicting to the last degree, by so much the greater 
must the obligation be to the person who will ease the nation of 
such a burden; and therefore we place it among the principal 
advantages which we are to receive from the admission of the 
Pretender, that he will not fail to rid us of this grievance, and 
by methods peculiar to himself deliver us from so great a bur- 
den as these debts are now, and, unless he deliver us, are Hke 
to be to the ages to come. Whether he will do this at once, by 
remitting most graciously to the nation the whole payment, 
and consequently take off the burden brevi manu, as with a 
sponge wiping out the infamous score, leaving it to fall as fate 
directs, or by prudent degrees, we know not, nor is it our busi- 
ness to determine it here. No doubt the doing it with a jerk, as 
we call it, comme un coup de grace, must be the most expeditious 
way; nay, and the kindest way of putting the nation out of its 
pain; for lingering deaths are counted cruel; and though un 
coup d'eclat may make an impression for the present, yet the 
astonishment is soonest over; besides, where is the loss to the 
nation in this sense? Though the money be stopped from 
the subject on one hand, if it be stopped to the subjects on the 
other, the nation loses or gains nothing. We know it will be 
answered that it is unjust, and that thousands of families will 
be ruined, because they who lose will not be those who gain. 
But what is this to the purpose in a national revolution? Un- 
just! Alas! is that an argument? Go and ask the Pretender! 



40 DANIEL DEFOE 

Does not he say you have all done unjustly by him? and since 
the nation in general loses nothing, what obligation has he to 
regard the particular injury that some familes may sustain? 
And yet farther, is it not remarkable that most of the money 
is paid by the cursed party of Whigs, who from the beginning 
officiously appeared to keep him from his right? And what obli- 
gation has he upon him to concern himself for doing them right 
in particular, more than other people? But to avoid the scandal 
of partiality, there is another thought offers to our view, which 
the nation is beholding to a particular author for putting us in 
mind of: if it be unjust that we should suppose the Pretender 
shall stop the payment on both sides, because it is doing the 
Whigs wrong, since the Tories, who perhaps, being chiefly 
landed men, pay the most taxes; then, to keep up a just bal- 
ance, he need only continue the taxes to be paid in, and only 
stop the annuities and interest which are to be paid out. Thus 
both sides having no reason to envy or reproach one another 
with hardships, or with suffering unequally, they may every 
one lose in proportion, and the money may be laid up in the 
hands of the new sovereign, for the good of the nation. . . . 

This amassing of treasure, by the stopping the funds on one 
hand, and the receiving the taxes on the other, will effectually 
enable the Pretender to set up and effectually maintain that 
glorious and so often desired method of government, au coup de 
canon, — Anglice, a standing army. . . . Then we should see 
a new face of our nation, and Britain would be no more a naked 
nation, as it has formerly been; then we should have numerous 
and gallant armies surrounding a martial prince, ready to make 
the world, as well as his own subjects, tremble. Then our in- 
land counties would appear full of royal fortifications, citadels, 
forts, and strong towns, the beauty of the kingdom, and awe 
of factious rebels. It is a strange thing that this refractory peo- 
ple of ours could never be made sensible how much it is for the 
glory and safety of this nation that we should be put into a pos- 
ture of defence against ourselves. It has been often alleged that 
this nation can never be ruined but with their own consent: if 
then we are our own enemies, is it not highly requisite that we 
should be put in a position to have our own ruin prevented? 
And that, since it is apparent we are no more fit to be trusted 
with our own liberties, having a natural and a national propen- 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 41 

sity to destroy and undo ourselves, and may be brought to con- 
sent to our own ruin, we should have such princes as for the fu- 
ture know how to restrain us ; and how reasonable is it to allow 
them forces to do so! . . . 

This sums up the happiness of the Pretender's reign. We 
need not talk of security, as the Review has done, and pretend 
he is not able to give us security for the performance of any- 
thing he promises. Every man that has any sense of the prin- 
ciples, honor, and justice of the Pretender, his zeal for the Ro- 
man Catholic cause, his gratitude to his benefactor, the French 
King, and his love to the glory and happiness of his native coun- 
try, must rest satisfied of his punctually performing all these 
great things for us. To ask him security would be not to affront 
him only, but to affront the whole nation; no man can doubt 
him; the nature of the thing allows that he must do us all that 
kindness; he cannot be true to his own reason without it. Where- 
fore this treaty executes itself, and appears so rational to be- 
lieve, that whoever doubts it may be supposed to doubt even 
the veracity of James the Just. . . , 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

BEING OBSERVATIONS OR MEMORIALS OF THE MOST RE- 
MARKABLE OCCURRENCES, AS WELL PUBLIC AS PRIVATE, 
WHICH HAPPENED IN LONDON DURING THE LAST GREAT 
VISITATION IN 1665 

WRITTEN BY A CITIZEN WHO CONTINUED ALL THE WHILE 
IN LONDON. NEVER MADE PUBLIC BEFORE 

1722 

[This work is the most Jampus — unless we regard Robinson Crusoe as 
of the same class — of the fictitious narratives which Defoe issued under 
the guise of personal memoirs. It appeared at the time when a recurrence 
of the plague was feared, and seemed so authentic that at a later time it 
was quoted as an authority by Dr. Mead, who had been appointed to 
make a report on precautions in the interest of the pubUc health. The 
Journal is not divided into chapters or sections; the extracts here given 
will be found on pages 11-18, 75-80, and 102-104 oi the Temple edition.] 

I NOW began to consider seriously with myself concerning my 
own case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, 



42 DANIEL DEFOE 

whether I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my 
house and flee, as many of my neighbors did. I have set this 
particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of 
moment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought 
to the same distress, and to the same manner of making their 
choice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with 
them rather for a direction to themselves to act by than a his- 
tory of my actings, seeing it may not be of one farthing value 
to them to note what became of me. 

I had two important things before me : the one was the carry- 
ing on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in 
which was embarked all my effects in the world ; and the other 
was the preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw 
apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, how- 
ever great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people's, 
represented to be much greater than it could be. 

The first consideration was of great moment to me. My 
trade was a saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a 
shop or chance trade, but among the merchants trading to the 
English colonies in America, so my effects lay very much in the 
hands of such. I was a single man, 't is true, but I had a family 
of servants whom I kept at my business; had a house, shop, 
and warehouses filled with goods; and, in short, to leave them 
all as things in such a case must be left, — that is to say, with- 
out any overseer or person fit to be trusted with them, — had 
been to hazard the loss not only of my trade, but of my goods, 
and indeed of all I had in the world. 

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not 
many years before come over from Portugal, and advising with 
him, his answer was in three words, the same that was given in 
another case quite different, viz., " Master, save thyself." In 
a word, he was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved 
to do himself with his family; telling me — what he had. it 
seems, heard abroad — that the best preparation for the plague 
was to run away from it. As to my argument of losing my tra* le, 
my goods, or debts, he quite confuted me. He told me the same 
thing which I argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust 
God with my safety and health, was the strongest repulse to 
my pretensions of losing my trade and my goods. " For," says 
he, " is it not as reasonable that you should trust God with the 



. A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 43 

chance or risk of losing your trade, as that you should stay in 
so eminent a point of danger, and trust Him with your life?" 

I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where 
to go, having several friends and relations in Northampton- 
shire, whence our family first came from; and particularly, I 
had an only sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and 
entertain me. 

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children 
into Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my go- 
ing very earnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his 
desires, but at that time could get no horse; for though it is true 
all the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may 
venture to say that in a manner all the horses did ; for there was 
hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some 
weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant, and, 
as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a soldier's tent with us, 
and so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no 
danger from taking cold. I say, as many did, because several 
did so at last, especially those who had been in the armies in 
the war which had not been many years past. And I must 
needs say that, speaking of second causes, had most of the peo- 
ple that traveled done so, the plague had not been carried into 
so many country towns and houses as it was, to the great dam- 
age, and indeed to the ruin, of abundance of people. 

But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down 
with me, deceived me; and being frighted at the increase of 
the distemper, and not knowing when I should go, he took 
other measures, and left me; so I was put off for that time. And 
one way or other, I always found that to appoint to go away 
was always crossed by some accident or other, so as to disap- 
point and put it off again; and this brings in a story which 
otherwise might be thought a needless digression, viz., about 
these disappointments being from Heaven. 

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any 
person to take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes 
conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it; 
namely, that he should keep his eye upon the particular provi- 
dences which occur at that time, and look upon them com- 
plexly, as they regard one another, and as all together regard 
the question before him; and then, I think, he may safely take 



44 DANIEL DEFOE 

them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned 
duty to do in such a case, — I mean as to going away from or 
staying in the place where we dwell, when visited with an in- 
fectious distemper. 

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was 
musing on this particular thing, that as nothing attended us 
without the direction or permission of Divine Power, so these 
disappointments must have something in them extraordinary; 
and I ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out, 
or intimate to me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not 
go. It immediately followed in my thoughts that, if it really 
was from God that I should stay, He was able effectually to pre- 
serve me in the midst of all the death and danger that would 
surround me; and that if I attempted to secure myself by flee- 
ing from my habitation, and acted contrary to these intima- 
tions which I believed to be divine, it was a kind of flying from 
God, and that He could cause his justice to overtake me when 
and where He thought fit. 

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when 
I came to discourse with my brother again, I told him that I 
inclined to stay and take my lot in that station in which God 
had placed me, and that it seemed to be made more especially 
my duty, on the account of what I have said. 

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at 
all I had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, 
and told me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called 
them, as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of 
Heaven if I had been any way disabled by distempers or dis- 
eases, and that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce 
in the direction of Him who, having been my Maker, had an un- 
disputed right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and that then 
there had been no difificulty to determine which was the call of 
His providence and which was not; but that I should take it as 
an intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, 
only because I could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was 
run away that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the 
same time I had my health and limbs, and other servants, and 
might with ease travel a day or two on foot, and, having a good 
certificate of being in perfect health, might either hire a horse 
or take post on the road, as I thought fit. 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 45 

Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences 
which attended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans 
in Asia and in other places where he had been (for my brother, 
being a merchant, was a few years before, as I have already ob- 
served, returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and 
how, presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, 
and of every man's end being predetermined and unalterably 
beforehand decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected 
places and converse with infected persons, by which means 
they died at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week ; whereas 
the Europeans or Christian merchants, who kept themselves 
retired and reserved, generally escaped the contagion. 

Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions 
again, and I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all 
things ready; for, in short, the infection increased round me. 
and the bills ^ were risen to almost seven hundred a week, and 
my brother told me he would venture to stay no longer. I de- 
sired him to let me consider of it but till the next day, and I 
would resolve; and as I had already prepared everything as 
well as I could as to my business, and whom to entrust my af- 
fairs with, I had httle to do but to resolve. 

I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind, 
irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening 
wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone; 
for already people had, as it were by a general consent, taken 
up the custom of not going out of doors after sunset; the rea- 
sons I shall have occasion to say more of by-and-by. 

In the retirement of this evening I endeavored to resolve, 
first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the arguments 
which my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I 
set against them the strong impressions which I had on my 
mind for staying; the visible call I seemed to have from the par- 
ticular circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me 
for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I might say, 
my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from 
Heaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and 
it occurred to me that, if I had what I might call a direction to 
stay, I ought to suppose it contained a promise of being pre- 
served if I obeyed. 

1 That is, the "bills of mortality," the official register of deaths. 



46 DANIEL DEFOE 

This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more 
encouraged to stay than ever, and supported with a secret sat- 
isfaction I should be kept. And to this, that, turning over the 
Bible which lay before me, and while my thoughts were more 
than ordinarily serious upon the question, I cried out, "Well, I 
know not what to do; Lord, direct me!" and the like. And at 
that juncture I happened to stop turning over the book at the 
91st Psalm, and, casting my eye on the second verse, I read on 
to the seventh verse exclusive, and after that included the tenth, 
as follows: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my for- 
tress ; my God, in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee 
from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. 
He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt 
thou trust ; His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt 
not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that 
flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; 
nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand 
shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but 
it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou 
behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast 
made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy 
habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any 
plague come nigh thy dwelling," etc. 

I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved 
that I would stay in the town, and, casting myself entirely upon 
the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek 
any other shelter whatever; and that, as my times were in His 
hands. He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in 
a time of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I 
was in His hands, and it was meet He should do with me as 
should seem good to Him. . . . 

I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, 
though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, ex- 
cept when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of our par- 
ish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist my 
curiosity to go and see it. As near as I may judge, it was about 
forty feet in length, and about fifteen or sixteen feet broad, and 
at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep; but it was 
said they dug it near twenty feet deep afterwards in one part of 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 47 

it, till they could go no deeper for the water; for they had, it 
seems, dug several large pits before this. For though the plague 
was long a-coming to our parish, yet, when it did come, there 
was no parish in or about London where it raged with such vio- 
lence as in the two parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel. 

I say they had dug several pits in another ground, when the 
distemper began to spread in our parish, and especially when 
the dead-carts began to go about, which was not, in our parish, 
till the beginning of August. Into these pits they had put per- 
haps fifty or sixty bodies each; then they made larger holes, 
wherein they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, 
by the middle to the end of August, came to from 200 to 400 a 
week; and they could not well dig them larger, because of the 
order of the magistrates confining them to leave no bodies 
within six feet of the surface; and the water coming on at about 
seventeen or eighteen feet, they could not well, I say, put more 
in one pit. But now, at the beginning of September, the plague 
raging in a dreadful manner, and the number of burials in our 
parish increasing to more than was ever buried in any parish 
about London of no larger extent, they ordered this dreadful 
gulf to be dug, — for such it was, rather than a pit. 

They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a 
month or more, when they dug it, and some blamed the church- 
wardens for suffering such a frightful thing, telling them they 
were making preparations to bury the whole parish, and the 
like. But time made it appear the churchwardens knew the 
condition of the parish better than they did; for, the pit being 
finished the 4th of September, I think, they began to bury in it 
the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had 
thrown into it 11 14 bodies, when they were obliged to fill it up, 
the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface, 
I doubt not but there may be some ancient persons ahve in the 
parish who can justify the fact of this, and are able to show 
even in what place of the churchyard the pit lay better than I 
can. The mark of it also was many years to be seen in the 
churchyard on the surface, lying in length parallel with the pas- 
sage which goes by the west wall of the churchyard out of 
Houndsditch, and turns East again into Whitechapel, coming 
out near the Three Nuns' Inn. 

It was about the loth of September that my curiosity led, or 



48 DANIEL DEFOE 

rather drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had 
been near 400 people buried in it; and I was not content to see 
it in the day-time, as I had done before, for then there would 
have been nothing to have been seen but the loose earth; for all 
the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with 
earth by those they called the buriers, which at other times 
were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night and see 
some of them thrown in. 

There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those 
pits, and that was only to prevent infection. But after some 
time that order was more necessary, for people that were in- 
fected and near their end, and delirious also, would run to those 
pits, wrapped in blankets or rugs, and throw themselves in, and, 
as they said, bury themselves. I cannot say that the officers 
suffered any wiUingly to lie there; but I have heard that in a 
great pit in Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying open 
then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, some came 
and threw themselves in, and expired there, before they threw 
any earth upon them ; and that when they came to bury others, 
and found them there, they were quite dead, though not cold. 

This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of 
that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to 
give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this, 
— that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no 
tongue can express. 

I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted 
with the sexton who attended, who, though he did not refuse 
me at all, yet earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very 
seriously, for he was a good, religious, and sensible man, that it 
was indeed their business and duty to venture, and to run all 
hazards, and that in it they might hope to be preserved; but 
that I had no apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which, 
he said, he believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify 
my running that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my 
mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, 
that might not be without its uses. "Nay," says the good man, 
"if you will venture upon that score, name of God go in; for, 
depend upon it, 'twill be a sermon to you, it may be, the best 
that ever you heard in your life. 'Tis a speaking sight," says he, 
"and has a voice with it, and a loud one, to call us all to repent- 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 49 

ance." And with that he opened the door and said, "Go, if 
you will." 

His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood 
wavering for a good while, but just at that interval I saw two 
links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the 
bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, as they called it, com- 
ing over the streets; so I could no longer resist my desire of see- 
ing it, and went in. There was nobody, as I could perceive at 
first, in the churchyard, or going into it, but the buriers and 
the fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; 
but when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to and again, 
muffled up in a brown cloak, and making motions with his 
hands under his cloak, as if he was in a great agony, and the 
buriers immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one 
of those poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to pre- 
tend, as I have said, to bury themselves. He said nothing as 
he walked about, but two or three times groaned very deeply 
and loud, and sighed as he would break his heart. 

When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was 
neither a person infected and desperate, as I have observed 
above, or a person distempered in mind, but one oppressed 
with a dreadful weight of grief indeed, having his wife and sev- 
eral of his children all in the cart that was just come in with 
him, and he followed in an agony and excess of sorrow. He 
mourned heartily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind of mas- 
cuhne grief that could not give itself vent by tears; and, calmly 
defying the buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the 
bodies thrown in and go away. So they left importuning him. 
But no sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot 
into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he 
at least expected they would have been decently laid in, though 
indeed he was afterwards convinced that was impracticable, — 
I say, no sooner did he see the sight but he cried aloud, unable 
to contain himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went 
backward two or three steps and fell down in a swoon. The 
buriers ran to him and took him up, and in a little while he 
came to himself, and they led him away to the Pie Tavern over 
against the end of Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man was 
known, and where they took care of him. He looked into the 
pit again as he went away, but the buriers had covered the bod- 



50 DANIEL DEFOE 

ies so immediately with throwing in earth, that, though there 
was light enough, — for there were lanterns, and candles in 
them, placed all night round the sides of the pit, upon heaps of 
earth, seven or eight, or perhaps more, — yet nothing could 
be seen. 

This was a mournful scene indeed, and affected me almost as 
much as the rest; but the other was awful and full of terror. 
The cart had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were 
wrapped up in linen sheets, some in rags, some little other than 
naked, or so loose that what covering they had fell from them 
in the shooting out of the cart; and they fell quite naked 
among the rest. But the matter was not much to them, or the 
indecency much to anyone else, seeing they were all dead, and 
were to be huddled together into the common grave of mankind, 
as we may call it; for here was no difference made, but poor and 
rich went together; there was no other way of burials, neither 
was it possible there should, for coffins were not to be had for 
the prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as this. . . . 

In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as 
particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible 
shrieks and screechings of women, who, in their agonies, would 
throw open their chamber windows and cry out in a dismal, 
surprising manner. It is impossible to describe the variety of 
postures in which the passions of the poor people would ex- 
press themselves. 

Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden 
a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman 
gave three frightful screeches, and then cried — "Oh! death, 
death, death!" in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me 
with horror and a chillness in my very blood. There was no- 
body to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other win- 
dow open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, nor 
could anybody help one another; so I went on to pass into Bell 
Alley. 

Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was 
a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed 
out at the window; but the whole family was in a terrible 
fright, and I could hear women and children run screaming 
about the rooms like distracted, when a garret-window opened, 



A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 51 

and somebody from a window on the other side the alley called 
and asked, "What is the matter?" Upon which, from the first 
window it was answered, " O Lord! my old master has hanged 
himself! " The other asked again, " Is he quite dead? " and the 
first answered, "Ay, ay, quite dead; quite dead and cold!" 
This person was a merchant and a deputy alderman, and very 
rich. I care not to mention the name, though I knew his name 
too ; but that would be an hardship to the family, which is now 
flourishing again. 

But this is but one; it is scarce credible what dreadful cases 
happened in particular families every day. People in the rage 
of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was 
indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, rav- 
ing and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon 
themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shoot- 
ing themselves, etc. ; mothers murdering their own children in 
their lunacy; some dying of mere grief as a passion, some of 
mere fright and surprise without any infection at all, others 
frightened into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into de- 
spair and lunacy, others into melancholy madness. 









5t^-..A 



JONATHAN SWIFT 
A TALE OF A TUB 

WRITTEN FOR THE UNIVERSAL IMPROVEMENT OF MANKIND 

Diu muUumgue desideratum 

1704 

[This early example of Swift's satire was written chiefly in the year 
1697. The title was already a familiar phrase in the meaning of an absurd 
or pointless story. The book contains a Dedication to Lord Somers, an 
address from Bookseller to Reader, an Epistle Dedicatory to Posterity, 
an Author's Preface, and eleven sections, of which one is called The Intro- 
duction, five are called Digressions of various kinds, and the remaining 
five give the Tale of the Tub proper, — the story of the three brothers. 
Of these, Peter represents the Roman Catholic Church, Martin (from 
Martin Luther) the moderate Reformers — especially of the Church of 
England, and Jack (from John Calvin) the more violent reformers — 
Presbyterians and other Dissenters. The father's will is of course the 
Bible, and the sons' coats are organized theology and church poHty; for 
the more detailed allusions throughout the satire, the reader must be re- 
ferred to some annotated edition, like that of Craik or Prescott. For 
convenience, extracts from the tale of the three brothers are here brought 
together continuously, — from Sections 11, iv,vi, and xi; those from the 
Digression on Madness, which forms Section ix, are added separately.] 

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY, TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE 

POSTERITY 

Sir : I here present your Highness with the fruits of a very 
few leisure hours, stolen from the short intervals of a world of 
business, and of an employment quite alien from such amuse- 
ments as this the poor production of that refuse of time, which 
has lain heavy upon m}^ hands during a long prorogation of 
Parliament, a great dearth of foreign news, and a tedious fit 
of rainy weather; for which, and other reasons, it cannot 
choose extremely to deserve such a patronage as that of your 
Highness, whose numberless virtues, in so few years, make the 
world look upon you as the future example to all princes. For 
although your Highness is hardly got clear of infancy, yet has 



A TALE OF A TUB 53 

the universal learned world already resolved upon appealing to 
your future dictates, with the lowest and most resigned sub- 
mission, fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the productions 
of human wit, in this poKte and most accomplished age. Me- 
thinks the number of appellants were enough to shock and 
startle any judge of a genius less unlimited than yours; but, in 
order to prevent such glorious trials, the person, it seems, to 
whose care the education of your Highness is committed, has 
resolved (as I am told) to keep you in ahnost a universal igno- 
rance of our studies, which it is your inherent birthright to in- 
spect. 

It is amazing to me that this person should have the assur- 
ance, in the face of the sun, to go about persuading your High- 
ness that our age is ahnost wholly illiterate, and has hardly pro- 
duced one writer upon any subject. I know very well that, 
when your Highness shall come to riper years, and have gone 
through the learning of antiquity, you will be too curious to 
neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you; 
and to think that this insolent, in the account he is preparing 
for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so insigni- 
ficant as I am ashamed to mention, — it moves my zeal and 
my spleen, for the honor and interest of our vast flourishing 
body, as well as of myself, for whom, I know by long experi- 
ence, he has professed, and still continues, a pecuKar mahce. 

It is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day pe- 
ruse what I am now writing, you may be ready to expostulate 
with your governor, upon the credit of what I here affirm, and 
command him to show you some of our productions. To which 
he will answer (for I am well informed of his designs) by asking 
your Highness where they are? and what is become of them? 
and pretend it a demonstration that there never were any, be- 
cause they are not then to be found. Not to be found! Who 
has mislaid them? are they sunk in the abyss of things? It is 
certain that in their own nature they were fight enough to sv^^im 
upon the surface for all eternity. Therefore the fault is in him 
who tied weights so heavy to their heels as to depress them to 
the centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has annihil- 
ated them? Were they drowned by purges, or martyred by 
pipes? But, that it may no longer be a doubt with your High- 
ness who is to be the author of this universal ruin, I beseech you 



54 JONATHAN SWIFT 

to observe that large and terrible scythe which your governor 
affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark 
the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his 
nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy 
to life and matter, infectious and corrupting; and then reflect 
whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of this gen- 
eration to make a suitable resistance. Oh ! that your Highness 
would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maUre dii palais 
of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors de page} 

It were needless to recount the several methods of tyranny 
and destruction, which your governor is pleased to practice 
upon this occasion. His inveterate malice is such to the writ- 
ings of our age, that of several thousands produced yearly from 
this renowned city, before the next revolution of the sun there 
is not one to be heard of. Unhappy infants! many of them 
barbarously destroyed, before they have so much as learnt 
their mother tongue to beg for pity. Some he stifles in their 
cradles; others he frights into convulsions, whereof they sud- 
denly die; some he flays alive, others he tears limb from hmb. 
Great numbers are offered to Moloch ; and the rest, tainted by 
his breath, die of a languishing consumption. 

But the concern I have most at heart is for our corporation 
of poets, from whom I am preparing a petition to your High- 
ness, to be subscribed with the names of one hundred and 
thirty-six of the first rate, but whose immortal productions are 
never likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is now an 
humble and earnest appellant for the laurel, and has large 
comely volumes ready to show, for a support to his preten- 
sions. The never-dying works of these illustrious persons, your 
governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable death; and your High- 
ness is to be made to believe that our age has never arrived at 
the honor to produce one single poet. We confess Immortahty 
to be a great and powerful goddess, but in vain we offer up to 
her our devotions and our sacrifices, if your Highness's gov- 
ernor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by an unparalleled 
ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour them. 

To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned, and devoid 
of writers in any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so 
false, that I have been some time thinking the contrary may 

1 Independent (having finished the term of service of a page). 



A TALE OF A TUB 55 

almost be proved by uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, 
indeed, that although their numbers be vast, and their produc- 
tions numerous in proportion, yet are they hurried so hastily 
off the scene that they escape our memory and elude our sight. 
When I first thought of this address, I had prepared a copious 
list of titles to present to your Highness, as an undisputed argu- 
ment for what I affirm. The originals were posted fresh upon 
all gates and corners of streets; but, returning in a very few 
hours to take a review, they were all torn down, and fresh ones 
in their places. I inquired after them among readers and book- 
sellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lost 
among men; their place was no more to be found; and I was 
laughed to scorn for a clown and a pedant, without all taste and 
refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and 
that knew nothing of what had passed in the best companies 
of court and town. So that I can only avow in general to your 
Highness that we do abound in learning and wit; but to fix 
upon particulars is a task too slippery for my slender abilities. 
If I should venture in a windy day to affirm to your Highness 
that there is a large cloud near the horizon, in the form of a 
bear; another in the zenith, with the head of an ass; a third to 
the westward, with claws like a dragon; and your Highness 
should in a few minutes think fit to examine the truth, it is cer- 
tain they would all be changed in figure and position. New 
ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would be that 
clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoo- 
graphy and topography of them. 

But your governor perhaps may still insist, and put the ques- 
tion, — What is then become of those immense bales of paper, 
which must needs have been employed in such numbers of 
books? Can these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sudden, 
as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an ob- 
jection? Books, like men their authors, have no more than one 
way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go 
out of it, and return no more. 

I profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that 
what I am going to say is literally true this minute I am writ- 
ing; what revolutions may happen before it shall be ready for 
your perusal, I can by no means warrant; however, I beg you 
to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our politeness, and 



56 JONATHAN SWIFT 

our wit. I do therefore affirm, upon the word of a sincere man, 
that there is now actually in being a certain poet, called John 
Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a 
large folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made, for 
aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is another, called Na- 
hum Tate, who is ready to make oath that he has caused many 
reams of verse to be published, whereof both himself and his 
bookseller (if lawfully required) can still produce authentic 
copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased to make 
such a secret of it. There is a third, known by the name of Tom 
Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, a universal genius, and 
most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and 
one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person 
styled Dn Bentley, who has written near a thousand pages of 
immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain 
squabble of wonderful importance between himself and a book- 
seller; he is a writer of infinite wit and humor; no man rallies 
with a better grace, and in more sprightly turns. Farther, I avow 
to your Highness that with these eyes I have beheld the person 
of William Wo tton, B.D., who has written a good sizable vol- 
ume against a friend ^ of your governor (from whom, alas ! he 
must therefore look for little favor), in a most gentlemanly 
style, adorned with the utmost politeness and civility, replete 
with discoveries equally valuable for their novelty and use, 
and embellished with traits of wit so poignant and so appo- 
site that he is a worthy yokemate to his forementioned friend. 

Why should I go upon farther particulars, which might fill a 
volume with the just eulogies of my contemporary brethren? 
I shall bequeath this piece of justice to a larger work, wherein 
I intend to write a character of the present set of wits in our 
nation. Their persons I shall describe particularly and at 
length, their genius and understandings in miniature. 

In the meantime, I do here make bold to present your High- 
ness with a faithful abstract, drawn from the universal body 
of all arts and sciences, intended wholly for your service and 
instruction. Nor do I doubt in the least but your Highness 
will peruse it as carefully, and make as considerable improve- 
ments, as other young princes have already done by the many 
volumes of late years written for a help to their studies. 

' Sir William Temple, who had taken the part of antiquity in the "quarrel of the an- 
cients and moderns," while Wotton represented the latter. See Swift's Battle oftfte Books. 



A TALE OF A TUB 



57 



That your Highness may advance in wisdom and virtue, as 
well as years, and at last outshine all your royal ancestors, shall 
be the daily prayer of. Sir, 

Your Highness's most devoted, &c. 

Dec. 1697. 

A TALE OF A TUB 

Once upon a time, there was a man who had three sons by 
one wife, and all at a birth; neithgL could the midwife tell cer- 
tainly which was the eldest. Their father died while they were 
young; and upon his death-bed, calling the lads to him, spoke 
thus : 

"Sons, because I have purchased no estate, nor was born to 
any, I have long considered of some good legacies to bequeath 
you; and at last, with much care, as well as expense, have pro- 
vided each of you (here they are) a new coat. Now you are to JK_- 
understand that these coats have two virtues contained in them : T 

one is, that with good wearing they will last you fresh and \ , . 
sound as long as you live; the other is, that they will grow in 
the same proportion with your bodies, lengthening and widen- 
ing of themselves, so as to be always fit. Here, — let me see 
them on you before I die. So; very well; pray, children, wear 
them clean, and brush them often. You will find in my will^ {b^i*H> 
(here it is) full instructions in every particular concerning the 
wearing and management of your coats; wherein you must be 
very exact, to avoid the penalties I have appointed for every 
transgression or neglect, upon which your future fortunes will 
entirely depend. I have also commanded in my will, that you 
should live together in one house like brethren and friends, for 
then you will be sure to thrive, and not otherwise." 

Here, the story says, this good father died, and the three sons 
went all together to seek their fortunes. 

I shall not trouble you with recounting what adventures they 
met for the first seven years, any farther than by taking notice 
that they carefully observed their father's will, and kept their 
coats in very good order; that they traveled through several 
countries, encountered a reasonable quantity of giants, and 
slew certain dragons. 

Being now arrived at the proper age for producing themselves, 



S8 JONATHAN SWIFT 

they came up to town, and fell in love with the ladies, but espe- 
cially three, who about that time were in chief reputation, — 
the Duchess d'Argent, Madame de Grands Titres, and the 
Countess d'Orgueil. On their first appearance, our three ad- 
venturers met with a very bad reception ; and soon with great 
sagacity guessing out the reason, they quickly began to improve 
in the good qualities of the town: they writ, and rallied, and 
rhymed, and sung, and said, and said nothing; they drank, and 
fought, and slept, and swore, and took snuff; they went to new 
plays on the first night, haunted the chocolate-houses, beat the 
watch, and lay on bulks; they bilked hackney-coachmen, and 
ran in debt with shopkeepers; they killed bailiffs, kicked fid- 
dlers down stairs, eat at Locket's, loitered at Will's;^ they talked 
of the drawing-room, and never came there; dined with lords 
they never saw ; whispered a duchess, and spoke never a word ; 
exposed the scrawls of their laundress for billetdoux of quality; 
came ever just from court, and were never seen in it; attended 
the levee sub dio ; ^ got a list of peers by heart in one company, 
and with great familiarity retailed them in another. Above all, 
they constantly attended those committees of senators who are 
silent in the house and loud in the coffee-house, where they 
nightly adjourn to chew the cud of politics, and are encom- 
passed with a ring of disciples, who lie in wait to catch up 
their droppings. The three brothers had acquired forty other 
qualifications of the like stamp, too tedious to recount, and by 
consequence were justly reckoned the most accomplished per- 
sons in the town; but all would not suffice, and the ladies afore- 
said continued still inflexible. To clear up which difficulty I 
must, with the reader's good leave and patience, have recourse 
to some points of weight, which the authors of that age have 
not sufficiently illustrated. 

For about this time it happened a sect arose, whose tenets 
obtained and spread very far, especially in the grand monde, 
and among everybody of good fashion. They worshiped a sort 
of idol ^^ who, as their doctrine delivered, did daily create men 
by a kind of manufactory operation. This idol they placed in 
the highest part of the house, on an altar erected about three 
foot; he was shown in the posture of a Persian emperor, sitting 

1 A leading coSee-house, in Covent Garden. Locket's was a restaurant near Charing 
Cross. 
* In the open air; i. e. they stayed in the street. ' The tailor. 



A TALE OF A TUB 59 

on a superficies, with his legs interwoven under him. This god 
had a^oose for his ensign; whence it is that some learned men 
pretend to deduce his original from Jupiter CapitoHnus. At 
his left hand, beneath the altar, Hell seemed to open, and catch 
at the animals the idol was creating; to prevent which, certain 
of his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed mass, or 
substance, and sometimes whole limbs already enhvened, which 
that horrid gulf insatiably swallowed, terrible to behold. The 
goose was held a subaltern divinity or deus minorum gentium, 
before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature whose hourly 
food is human gore, and who is in so great renown abroad for 
being the delight and favorite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus. 
Millions of these animals were cruelly slaughtered every day 
to appease the hunger of that consuming deity. The chief idol 
was also worshiped as the inventor of the yard and needle; 
whether as the god of seamen, or on account of certain other 
mystical attributes, has not been sufficiently cleared. 

The worshipers of this deity had also a system of their be- 
lief, which seemed to turn upon the following fundamentals. 
They held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which in- 
vests everything; that the earth is invested by the air; the air is 
invested by the stars ; and the stars are invested by the primum 
mobile. Look on this globe of earth, you will find it to be a very 
complete and fashionable dress. What is that which some call 
land, but a fine coat faced with green? or the sea, but a waist- 
coat of water- tabby? Proceed to the particular works of the 
creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature has been, 
to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a peri- 
wig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white 
satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man 
himself but a micro-coat, or rather a complete suit of clothes 
with all its trimmings? As to his body, there can be no dispute; 
but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will find 
them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an ex- 
act dress: to instance no more, is not religion a cloak; honesty 
a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt; self-love a surtout; vanity 
a shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches? 

These postulata being admitted, it will follow in due course 
of reasoning that those beings, which the world calls improperly 
suits of clothes, are in reality the most refined species of ani- 



6o JONATHAN SWIFT 

mals; or, to proceed higher, that they are rational creatures, or 
men. For is it not manifest that they live, and move, and talk, 
and perform all other offices of human life? Are not beauty, 
and wit, and mien, and breeding, their inseparable proprieties? 
In short, we see nothing but them, hear nothing but them. Is 
it not they who walk the streets, fill up parliament-, coffee-, 
play-houses? It is true, indeed, that these animals, which are 
vulgarly called suits of clothes, or dresses, do, according to cer- 
tain compositions, receive different appellations. If one of them 
be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red gown, and a white 
rod, and a great horse, it is called a lord-mayor; if certain er- 
mines and furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a 
judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we 
entitle a bishop. 

Others of these professors, though agreeing in the main sys- 
tem, were yet more refined upon certain branches of it, and 
held that man was an animal compounded of two dresses, the 
natural and celestial suit, which were the body and the soul; 
that the soul was the outward, and the body the inward cloth- 
ing; that the latter was ex traduce ^^ but the former of daily 
creation and circumfusion ; this last they proved by scripture, be- 
cause in them we live, and move, and have our being, as like- 
wise by philosophy, because they are all in all, and all in every 
part. Besides, said they, separate these two, and you will find 
the body to be only a senseless unsavory carcase. By all which 
it is manifest that the outward dress must needs be the soul. 

To this system of religion were tagged several subaltern doc- 
trines, which were entertained with great vogue; as particu- 
larly, the faculties of the mind were deduced by the learned 
among them in this manner: embroidery was sheer wit; gold 
fringe was agreeable conversation; gold lace was repartee; a 
huge long periwig was humor; and a coat full of powder was 
very good raillery ; — all which required abundance of finesse 
and delicatesse to manage with advantage, as well as a strict 
observance after times and fashions. 

I have, with much pains and reading, collected out of an- 
cient authors this short summary of a body of philosophy and 
divinity, which seems to have been composed by a vein and 

' Received directly from the original source; an allusion to a theological dispute as to 
the origin of the soul. 



A TALE OF A TUB 6i 

race of thinking very different from any other systems either an- 
cient or modern. And it was not merely to entertain or satisfy 
the reader's curiosity, but rather to give him hght into several 
circumstances of the following story; that, knowing the state of 
dispositions and opinions in an age so remote, he may better 
comprehend those great events which were the issue of them. 
I advise therefore the courteous reader to peruse with a world 
of application, again and again, whatever I have written upon 
this matter. And leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather 
up the chief thread of my story and proceed. 

These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as well as the 
practices of them, among the refined part of court and town, 
that our three brother-adventurers, as their circumstances 
then stood, were strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the 
three ladies they addressed themselves to, whom we have named 
already, were at the very top of the fashion, and abhorred all 
that were below it the breadth of a hair. On the other side, 
their father's will was very precise, and it was the main pre- 
cept in it, with the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or 
diminish from their coats one thread, without a positive com- 
mand in the will. Now the coats their father had left them 
were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides, so neatly sewn, 
you would swear they were all of a piece; but at the same time 
very plain, and with Httle or no ornament; and it happened that, 
before they were a month in town, great shoulder-knots came 
up; straight all the world was shoulder-knots; — no approach- 
ing the ladies' ruellcs ^ without the quota of shoulder-knots. 
" That fellow," cries one, " has no soul; where is his shoulder- 
knot?" Our three brethren soon discovered their want by sad 
experience, meeting in their walks with forty mortifications and 
indignities. If they went to the play-house, the door-keeper 
showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If they called a 
boat, says a waterman, " I am first sculler." If they stepped to 
the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, "Friend, we 
sell no ale." If they went to visit a lady, a footman met them 
at the door, with ''Pray send up your message." In this un- 
happy case, they went immediately to consult their father's 
will, read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. 
What should thfy do? What temper should they find? Obe- 

1 The bed-room alcoves used as reception-rooms by French ladies. 



62 JONATHAN SWIFT 

dience was absolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots ap- 
peared extremely requisite. After much thought, one of the 
brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than the other 
two, said he had found an expedient. "It is true," said he, 
' ' there is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis, making men- 
tion of shoulder-knots; but I dare conjecture, we may find them 
inclusive, or totidem syllabis." This distinction was immediately 
approved by all, and so they fell again to examine the will; but 
their evil star had so directed the matter that the first syllable 
was not to be found in the whole writings. Upon which disap- 
pointment, he who found the former evasion took heart, and 
said, " Brothers, there are yet hopes; for though we cannot find 
them totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we shall 
make them out tertio modo, or totidem Uteris." This discovery 
was also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to 
the scrutiny, and picked out s,h,o,u,l,d,e,r; when the same 
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a 
K was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But the 
distinguishing brother, for whom we shall hereafter find a name, 
now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument that k was 
a modern, illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor 
anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts. '"Tis true," 
said he, ''Calendae hath in q. v. c.^ been sometimes written with 
a K, but erroneously; for in the best copies it has been ever spelt 
with a c." And, by consequence, it was a gross mistake in our 
language to spell knot with a k ; but that from henceforward he 
would take care it should be written with a c. Upon this all 
farther difiiculty vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly 
out to he jure paterno; and our three gentlemen swaggered with 
as large and as flaunting ones as the best. But, as human happi- 
ness is of a very short duration, so in those days were human 
fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had 
their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline; for 
a certain lord came just from Paris, with fifty yards of gold lace 
upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that 
month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of 
gold lace; whoever durst peep abroad without his complement 
of gold lace, was ill received among the women. What should 
our three knights do in this momentous affair? They had suffi- 

* Some ancient MSS. {quibusdam veteribus codicibus). 



A TALE OF A TUB 63 

ciently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-knots; 
upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there but altum si- 
lentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying, circum- 
stantial point; but this of gold lace seemed too considerable an 
alteration without better warrant; it did aliquo modo essentice 
adhcerere,^ and therefore required a positive precept. But about 
this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read 
Arisiotelis dialectica, and especially that wonderful piece de in- 
ter pretatione, which has the faculty of teaching its readers to 
find out a meaning in everything but itself, — like commenta- 
tors on the Revelaiiojis, who proceed prophets without under- 
standing a syllable of the text. "Brothers," said he, "you are 
to be informed that of wills duo sunt genera, nuncupatory and 
scriptory; that in the scrip tory will here before us, there is no 
precept or mention about gold lace, conceditur; but, si idem affir- 
metur de nuncupatorio , negaiur. For, brothers, if you remem- 
ber, we heard a fellow say, when we were boys, that he heard 
my father's man say that he heard my father say that he would 
advise his sons to get gold lace on their coats, as soon as ever 
they could procure money to buy it." " By G — ! that is very 
true," cried the other. "I remember it perfectly well," said the 
third. And so without more ado got the largest gold lace in 
the parish, and walked about as fine as lords. 

A while after there came up all in fashion a pretty sort of 
flame-colored satin for linings, and the mercer brought a pat- 
tern of it immediately to our three gentlemen. "An please 

your worships," said he, "my Lord C and Sir J. W. had hn- 

ings out of this very piece last night ; it takes wonderfully, and 
I shall not have a remnant left enough to make my wife a pin- 
cushion, by to-morrow morning at ten o'clock." Upon this they 
fell again to rummage the will, because the present case also 
required a positive precept, the lining being held by orthodox 
writers to be of the essence of the coat. After long search, they 
could fix upon nothing to the matter in hand, except a short ad- 
vice of their father in the will, to take care of fire, and put out 
their candles before they went to sleep. This, though a good 
deal for the purpose, and helping very far towards self-convic- 
tion, yet not seeming wholly of force to establish a command 

1 This and the Latin phrases that follow burlesque the jargon of the Schoolmen of the 
mediaeval church. 



64 JONATHAN SWIFT 

(being resolved to avoid farther scruple, as well as future occa- 
sion for scandal), says he that was the scholar, "I remember to 
have read in wills of a codicil annexed, which is indeed a part of 
the will, and what it contains has equal authority with the rest. 
Now I have been considering of this same will here before us, 
and I cannot reckon it to be complete for want of such a codicil. 
I will therefore fasten one in its proper place very dexterously; 
I have had it by me some time ; it was written by a dog-keeper 
of my grandfather's, and talks a great deal, as good luck would 
have it, of this very flame-colored satin." The project was im- 
mediately approved by the other two; an old parchment scroll 
was tagged on according to art, in the form of a codicil annexed, 
and the satin bought and worn. 

Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the corpora- 
tion of fringe-makers, acted his part in a new comedy, all cov- 
ered with silver fringe, and, according to the laudable custom, 
gave rise to that fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting 
their father's will, to their great astonishment found these 
words: ^^ Item, I charge and command my said three sons to 
wear no sort of silver fringe upon or about their said coats, &c.," 
with a penalty, in case of disobedience, too long here to insert. 
However, after some pause, the brother so often mentioned for 
his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had found in a 
certain author, which he said should be nameless, that the 
same word which, in the will, is called fringe, does also signify a 
broom-stick, and doubtless ought to have the same interpreta- 
tion in this paragraph. This another of the brothers disliked, 
because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly con- 
ceived, in propriety of speech, be reasonably applied to a broom- 
stick; but it was replied upon him that his epithet was under- 
stood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he 
objected again, why their father should forbid them to wear 
a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural 
and impertinent? — upon which he was taken up short, as one 
who spoke irreverently of a mystery, which doubtless was very 
useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried 
into, or nicely reasoned upon. And, in short, their father's 
authority being now considerably sunk, this expedient was 
allowed to serve as a lawful dispensation for wearing their full 
proportion of silver fringe. 



A TALE OF A TUB 65 

A while after was revived an old fashion, long antiquated, of 
embroidery with Indian figures of men, women, and children. 
Here they had no occasion to examine the will; they remem- 
bered but too well how their father had always abhorred this 
fashion; that he made several paragraphs on purpose, import- 
ing his utter detestation of it, and bestowing his everlasting curse 
to his sons, whenever they should wear it. For all this, in a few 
days they appeared higher in the fashion than anybody else in 
the town. But they solved the matter by saying that these fig- 
ures were not at all the same with those that were formerly worn, 
and were meant in the will. Besides, they did not wear them in 
the sense as forbidden by their father, but as they were a com- 
mendable custom, and of great use to the public. That these 
rigorous clauses in the will did therefore require some allowance, 
and a favorable interpretation, and ought to be understood 
cum grano sails. 

Bjit fashions perpetually altering in that age, the scholastic 
brother grew weary of searching farther evasions, and solving 
everlasting contradictions. Resolved, therefore, at all hazards, 
to comply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters 
together, and agreed unanimously to lock up their father's will 
in a strong box, brought out of Greece or Italy, I have forgotten 
which, and trouble themselves no farther to examine it, but 
only refer to its authority whenever they thought fit. In con- 
sequence whereof, a while after it grew a general mode to 
wear an infinite number of points, most of them tagged with 
silver; upon which, the scholar pronounced ex cathedra that 
points were absolutely jure paterno, as they might very well re- 
member. It is true, indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat 
more than were directly named in the will; however, that they, 
as heirs-general of their father, had power to make and add 
certain clauses for public emolument, though not deducible, 
totidem verbis, from the letter of the will, or else multa ahsurda 
sequerentur. This was understood for canonical, and therefore, 
on the following Sunday, they came to church all covered with 
points. 

The learned brother, so often mentioned, was reckoned the 
best scholar in all that, or the next street to it; insomuch as, 
having run something behind-hand in the world, he obtained 
the favor of a certain lord to receive him into his house, and to 



66 JONATHAN SWIFT 

teach his children. A while after the lord died, and he, by long 
practice of his father's will, found the way of contriving a deed 
of conveyance of that house to himself and his heirs ; upon which 
he took possession, turned the young squires out, and received 
his brothers in their stead. 

I have now, with much pains and study, conducted the reader 
to a period where he must expect to hear of great revolutions. 
For no sooner had our learned brother, so often mentioned, got 
a warm house of his own over his head, than he began to look 
big, and take mightily upon him; insomuch that unless the gen- 
tle reader, out of his great candor, will please a little to exalt his 
idea, I am afraid he will henceforth hardly know the hero of the 
play, when he happens to meet him ; his part, his dress, and his 
mien being so much altered. 

He told his brothers, he would have them to know that he 
was their elder, and consequently his father's sole heir; nay, a 
while after, he would not allow them to call him brother, but 
Mr. Peter; and then he must be styled Father Peter; and some- 
times, My Lord Peter. . . . 

In short, Peter grew so scandalous that all the neighborhood 
began in plain words to say he was no better than a knave. 
And his two brothers, long weary of his ill usage, resolved at last 
to leave him; but first they humbly desired a copy of their 
father's will, which had now lain by neglected time out of mind. 
Instead of granting this request, he called them damned sons of 
whores, rogues, traitors, and the rest of the vile names he could 
muster up. However., while he was abroad one day upon his 
projects, the two youngsters watched their opportunity, made 
a shift to come at the will, and took a copia vera,^ by which they 
presently saw how grossly they had been abused; their father 
having left them equal heirs, and strictly commanded that what- 
ever they got should lie in common among them all. Pursuant 
to which, their next enterprise was to break open the cellar- 
door, and get a little good drink, to spirit and comfort their 
hearts. . . . While all this was in agitation, there enters a solicitor 
from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter would please procure a par- 
don for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the two 
brothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a 
fellow who deserved to be hanged much better than his client, 

1 True copy. 



A TALE OF A TUB 67 

and discovered all the method of that imposture, in the same 
form I delivered it a while ago, advising the solicitor to put his 
" friend upon obtaining a pardon from the king. In the midst of 
all this clutter and revolution, in comes Peter with a file of dra- 
goons at his heels, and, gathering from all hands what was in 
the wind, he and his gang, after several millions of scurrilities 
and curses, not very important here to repeat, by main force 
very fairly kicked them both out of doors, and would never let 
them come under his roof from that day to this. . . . 

The two exiles, so nearly united in fortune and interest, took 
a lodging together; where, at their first leisure, they began to 
reflect on the numberless misfortunes and vexations of their 
past life, and could not tell on the sudden to what failure in their 
conduct they ought to impute them; when, after some recollec- 
tion, they called to mind the copy of their father's will, which 
they had so happily recovered. This was immediately pro- 
duced, and a firm resolution taken between them to alter what- 
ever was already amiss, and reduce all their future measures to 
the strictest obedience prescribed therein. The main body of 
the will (as the reader cannot easily have forgot) consisted in 
certain admirable rules about the wearing of their coats ; in the 
perusal whereof, the two brothers, at every period, duly com- 
paring the doctrine with the practice, there was never seen a 
wider difference between two things, — horrible downright 
transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved, 
without further delay, to fall immediately upon reducing the 
whole, exactly after their father's model. 

But here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient 
to see the end of an adventure, before we writers can duly pre- 
pare him for it. I am to record that these two brothers began 
to be distinguished at this time by certain names. One of them 
desired to be called Martin, and the other took the appellation 
of Jack. These two had lived in much friendship and agreement 
under the tyranny of their brother Peter, as it is the talent of 
fellow-sufferers to do, — men in misfortune being like men in 
the dark, to whom all colors are the same; but when they came 
forward into the world, and began to display themselves to each 
other, and to the light, their complexions appeared extremely 
different; which the present posture of their affairs gave them 
sudden opportunity to discover. 



68 JONATHAN SWIFT 

But here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of 
short memory, a deficiency to which a true modern cannot but, 
of necessity, be a Httle subject. Because memory, being an em- 
ployment of the mind upon things past, is a faculty for which 
the learned in our illustrious age have no manner of occasion, 
who deal entirely with invention, and strike all things out of 
themselves, or at least by collision from each other; upon which 
account we think it highly reasonable to produce our great for- 
getfulness as an argument unanswerable for our great wit. I 
ought in method to have informed the reader, about fifty pages 
ago, of a fancy Lord Peter took, and infused into his brothers, 
to wear on their coats whatever trimmings came up in fashion ; 
never pulling off any, as they went out of the mode, but keeping 
on all together, which amounted in time to a medley the most 
antic you can possibly conceive ; and this to a degree that, upon 
the time of their falUng out, there was hardly a thread of the 
original coat to be seen, but an infinite quantity of lace and rib- 
bons, and fringe, and embroidery, and points, — I mean only 
those tagged with silver, for the rest fell off. Now this material 
circumstance, having been forgot in due place, as good fortune 
hath ordered, comes in very properly here, when the two bro- 
thers are just going to reform their vestures into the primitive 
state prescribed by their father's will. 

They both unanimously entered upon this great work, look- 
ing sometimes on their coats, and sometimes on the will. Mar- 
tin laid the first hand; at one twitch brought off a large handful 
of points, and with a second pull stripped away ten dozen yards 
-ef-Mnge. But when he had gone thus far, he demurred a while. 
He knew very well there yet remained a great deal more to be 
done; however, the first heat being over, his violence began to 
cool, and he resolved to proceed more moderately in the rest of 
the work; having already narrowly escaped a swinging rent in 
pulUng off the points, which, being tagged with silver (as we 
have observed before), the judicious workman had, with much 
sagacity, double sewn, to preserve them from falling. Resolv- 
ing therefore to rid his coat of a huge quantity of gold lace, he 
picked up the stitches with much caution, and diligently gleaned 
out all the loose threads as he went, which proved to be a work 
of time. Then he fell about the embroidered Inxiian figures of 
men, women, and children, against which, as you have heard in 



A TALE OF A TUB 69 

its due place, their father's testament was extremely exact and 
severe; these, with much dexterity and application, were, after 
a while, quite eradicated, or utterly defaced. For the rest, 
where he observed the embroidery to be worked so close as not 
to be got away without damaging the cloth, or where it served 
to hide or strengthen any flaw in the body of the coat, con- 
tracted by the perpetual tampering of workmen upon it, he con- 
cluded the wisest course was to let it remain, resolving in no 
case whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer 
injury ; which he thought the best method for serving the true 
intent and meaning of his father's will. And this is the nearest 
account I have been able to collect of Martin's proceedings 
upon this great revolution. 

But his brother Jack, whose adventures will be so extraordi- 
nary as to furnish a great part in the remainder of this discourse, 
entered upon the matter with other thoughts, and a quite differ- 
ent spirit. For the memory of Lord Peter's injuries produced 
a degree of hatred and spite, which had a much greater share of 
inciting him than any regards after his father's commands, since 
these appeared, at best, only secondary and subservient to the 
other. . . . Having thus kindled and inflamed himself as high 
as possible, and by consequence in a delicate temper for begin- 
ning a reformation, he set about the work immediately, and in 
three minutes made more dispatch than Martin had done in as 
many hours. For, courteous reader, you are given to under- 
stand that zeal is never so highly obliged as when you set it 
a-tearing ; and Jack, who doted on that quality in himself, 
allowed it at this time its full swing. Thus it happened that, 
stripping down a parcel of gold lace a little too hastily, he rent 
the main body of his coat from top to bottom; and, whereas his 
talent was not of the happiest in taking up a stitch, he knew no 
better way than to darn it again with packthread and a skewer. 
But the matter was yet infinitely worse (I record it with tears) 
when he proceeded to the embroidery; for, being clumsy by na- 
ture, and of temper impatient, — withal, beholding millions of 
stitches that required the nicest hand, and sedatest constitu- 
tion, to extricate, — in a great rage he tore off the whole piece, 
cloth and all, and flung it into the kennel; and furiously thus 
continuing his career, — "Ah, good brother Martin," said he, 
" do as I do, for the love of God! Strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off 



70 JONATHAN SWIFT 

all, that we may appear as unlike the rogue Peter as it is possi- 
ble. I would not, for a hundred pounds, carry the least mark 
about me, that might give occasion to the neighbors of sus- 
pecting that I was related to such a rascal." . , . 

Jack had provided a fair copy of his father's will, engrossed 
in form upon a large skin of parchment; and, resolving to act 
the part of a most dutiful son, be became the fondest creature 
of it imaginable. For although, as I have often told the reader, 
it consisted wholly in certain plain, easy directions, about the 
management and wearing of their coats, with legacies and pen- 
alties in case of obedience or neglect, yet he began to entertain 
a fancy that the matter was deeper and darker, and therefore 
must needs have a great deal more of mystery at the bottom. 
"Gentlemen," said he, "I will prove this very skin of parch- 
ment to be meat, drink, and cloth; to be the philosopher's 
stone, and the universal medicine." In consequence of which 
raptures he resolved to make use of it iiKthe most necessary, 
as well as the most paltry occasions of lif\^He had a way of 
working it into any shape he pleased, so that it served him for 
a nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainy 
weather. He would lap a piece of it about a sore toe, or, when 
he had fits, burn two inches under his nose; or, if anything lay 
heavy on his stomach, scrape off, and swallow as much of the 
powder as would lie on a silver penny ; they were all infallible 
remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his common talk 
and conversation ran wholly in the phrase of his will, and he 
circumscribed the utmost of his eloquence within that com- 
pass, not daring to let slip a syllable without authority from 
thence. 

He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his 
meat; nor could all the world persuade him, as the common 
phrase is, to eat his victuals like a Christian. 

He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon, and to 
the livid snuffs of a burning candle, which he would catch and 
swallow with an agility wonderful to conceive; and, by this pro- 
cedure, maintained a perpetual flame in his belly, which, issuing 
in a glowing steam from both his eyes, as well as his nostrils 
and his mouth, made his head appear in a dark night like the 
skull of an ass, wherein a roguish boy hath conveyed a farthing 
candle, to the terror of His Majesty's liege subjects. Therefore 



A TALE OF A TUB 71 

he made use of no other expedient to light himself home, but 
was wont to say that a wise man was his own lantern. 

He would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if// 
he happened to bounce his head against a post, or fall into a// 
kennel (as he seldom missed either to do one or both), he wouljf 
tell the gibing prentices, who looked on, that he submitted with 
entire resignation, as to a trip, or a blow of fate, with whom he 
found, by long experience, how vain it was either to wrestle or 
to cufif; and whoever durst undertake to do either, would be sure 
to come off with a swinging fall, or a bloody nose. " It was or- 
dained," said he, "some few days before the creation, that my 
nose and this very post should have a rencounter; and therefore 
nature thought fit to send us both into the world in the same 
age, and to make us countrymen and fellow-citizens. Now had 
my eyes been open, it is very likely the business might have 
been a great deal worse; for how many a confounded slip is 
daily got by a man with all his foresight about him? Besides, 
the eyes of the understanding see best, when those of the senses 
are out of the way; and therefore blind men are observed to 
tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and 
judgment, than those who rely with too much confidence upon 
the virtue of the visual nerve, which every little accident shakes 
out of order, and a drop, or a film, can wholly disconcert; — like 
a lantern among a pack of roaring buUies when they scour the 
streets, exposing its owner and itself to outward kicks and 
buffets, which both might have escaped, if the vanity of ap- 
pearing would have suffered them to walk in the dark. But 
further, if we examine the conduct of these boasted lights, it 
will prove yet a great deal worse than their fortune. 'T is true, 
I have broke my nose against this post, because Providence 
either forgot, or did not think it convenient, to twitch me by 
the elbow, and give me notice to avoid it. But let not this en- 
courage either the present age, or posterity, to trust their noses 
into the keeping of their eyes, which may prove the fairest way 
of losing them for good and all. For, O ye eyes, ye blind 
guides! miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses; ye, I say, 
who fasten upon the first precipice in view, and then tow our 
wretched willing bodies after you, to the very brink of destruc- 
tion; but, alas! that brink is rotten, our feet slip, and we tum- 
ble down prone into a gulf, without one hospitable shrub in the 



72 JONATHAN SWIFT 

way to break the fall; a fall, to which not any nose of mortal 
make is equal, except that of the giant Laurcalco, who was lord 
of the silver bridge. Most properly therefore, O eyes! and with 
great justice, may you be compared to those foolish lights 
which conduct men through dirt and darkness, till they fall into 
a deep pit or a noisome bog." 

This I have produced as a scantUng of Jack's great eloquence, 
and the force of his reasoning upon such abtruse matters. . .• . 

A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, AND IM- 
PROVEMENT OF MADNESS, IN A COMMONWEALTH r 

. . . The reader will, I am sure, agree with me in the conclu- 
sion that, if the moderns mean by madness only a disturbance 
or transposition of the brain, by force of certain vapors issuing 
up from the lower faculties, then hath this madness been the 
parent of all those mighty revolutions that have happened in 
empire, philosophy, and in religion. For the brain, in its na- 
tural position and state of serenity, disposes its owner to pass 
his life in the common forms, without any thoughts of subduing 
multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his visions; and the 
more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human 
learning, the less he is inclined to form parties, after his particu- 
lar notions, because that instructs him in his private infirmities, 
as well as in the stubborn ignorance of the people. 

But when a man's fancy gets astride on his reason, when im- 
agination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understand- 
ing, as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors, the first 
proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, 
the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, a strong 
delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from 
within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the 
same that tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and 
pleasures we most value in life are such as dupe and play the 
wag with the senses. For, if we take an examination of what is 
generally understood by happiness, as it hath respect either to 
the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties 
and adjuncts will herd under this short definition, — that it is 
aj)erpetual possession of being well deceived. And, first, with 
relation tcr^the mind or understanding, 'tis manifest what 
mighty advantages fiction has over truth; and the reason is just 



A TALE OF A TUB 73 

at our elbow, — because imagination can build nobler scenes, 
and produce more wonderful revolutions, than fortune or na- 
ture will be at expense to furnish. Nor is mankind so much to 
blame in his choice, thus determining him, if we consider that 
the debate merely lies between things past and things con- 
ceived; and so the question is only this, — whether things that 
have place in the imagination may not as properly be said to 
exist as those that are seated in the memory; which may be 
justly held in the affirmative, and very much to the advantage 
of the former, since this is acknowledged to be the womb of 
things, and the other allowed to be no more than the grave. 
Again, if we take this definition of happiness, and examine it 
with reference to the senses, it will be acknowledged wonder- 
fully adapt. How fading and insipid do all objects accost us, 
that are not conveyed in the vehicle of delusion! How shrunk 
is everything, as it appears in the glass of nature ! So that if it 
were not for the assistance of artificial mediums, false lights, 
refracted angles, varnish and tinsel, there would be a mighty 
level in the felicity and enjoyments of mortal men. If this 
were seriously considered by the world, as I have a certain rea- 
son to suspect it hardly will, men would no longer reckon 
among their high points of wisdom, the art of exposing weak 
sides, and pubHshing infirmities, — an employment, in my 
opinion, neither better nor worse than that of unmasking, 
which, I think, has never been allowed ^ fair usage, either in 
the world or the playhouse. 

In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful posses- 
sion of the mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom 
which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy 
which enters into the depth of things, and then comes gravely 
back with informations and discoveries that in the inside they 
are good for nothing. The two senses to which all objects first 
address themselves are the sigh t and the^t ouch ; these never 
examine farther than the color, the shape, the size, and what- 
ever other qualities dwell, or are drawn by art, upon the out- 
ward of bodies; and then comes reason officiously, with tools 
for cutting and opening and mangling and piercing, offering to 
demonstrate that they are not of the same consistence quite 
through. Now I take all this to be the last degree of pervert- 

1 Considered (to be). 



74 JONATHAN SWIFT 

ing nature, one of whose eternal laws it is, to put her best furni- 
ture forward. And therefore, in order to save the charges of all 
such expensive anatomy for the time to come, I do here think 
fit to inform the reader that, in such conclusions as these, rea- 
son is certainly in the right, and that in most corporeal beings 
which have fallen under my cognizance, the outside has been 
infinitely preferable to the in; whereof I have been farther 
convinced from some late experiments. Last week I saw a wo- 
man flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her 
person for the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcase of a beau 
to be stripped in my presence, when we were all amazed to find 
so many unsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I 
laid open his brain, his heart, and his spleen; but I plainly per- 
ceived at every operation, that the farther we proceeded, we 
found the defects increase upon us in number and bulk. From 
all which, I justly formed this conclusion to myself, that what- 
ever philosopher or projector can find out an art to solder and 
patch up the flaws and imperfections of nature, will deserve 
much better of mankind, and teach us a more useful science, 
than that so much in present esteem, of widening and exposing 
them, like him who held anatomy to be the ultimate end of 
physic. And he whose fortunes and dispositions have placed 
him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of this noble art, 
— he that can, with Epicurus, content his ideas with the films 
and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of 
things, — such a man, truly wise, creams off nature, leaving 
the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This 
is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called the posses- 
sion of being well deceived, — the serene, peaceful state of be- 
ing a fool among knaves. 

But to return to madness. It is certain that, according to the 
system I have above deduced, every species thereof proceeds 
from a redundancy of vapors. Therefore, as some kinds of 
frenzy give double strength to the sinews, so there are of other 
species which add vigor, and life, and spirit to the brain. Now 
it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession 
of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty 
dwellings, which, for want of business, either vanish, and carry 
away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all 
out of the windows. By which are mystically displayed two 



A TALE OF A TUB 75 

principal branches of madness, and which some philosophers, 
not considering so well as I, have mistook to be different in 
their causes, over-hastily assigning the first to deficiency and 
the other to redundance. 

I think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, 
that the main point of skill and address is to furnish employ- 
ment for this redundancy of vapor, and prudently to adjust the 
seasons of it; by which means it may certainly become of car- 
dinal and cathohc emolument in a commonwealth. Thus one 
man, choosing a proper juncture, leaps into a gulf, from thence 
proceeds a hero, and is called the savior of his country; another 
achieves the same enterprise, but, unluckily timing it, has left 
the brand of madness fixed as a reproach upon his memory. 
Upon so nice a distinction are we taught to repeat the name of 
Cur tins with reverence and love, that of Empedocles with hatred 
and contempt. Thus also it is usually conceived that the elder 
Brutus only personated the fool and madman for the good of 
the public; but this was nothing else than a redundancy of the 
same vapor long misapplied, called by the Latins ingenium 
par negotiis, — or, to translate it as nearly as I can, a sort of 
frenzy, never in its right element, till you take it up in business 
of the state. 

Upon all which, and many other reasons of equal weight, 
though not equally curious, I do here gladly embrace an oppor- 
tunity I have long sought for, of recommending it as a very 
noble undertaking to Sir Edward Seymour, Sir Christopher 
Musgrave, Sir John Bowls, John How, Esq.,^ and other patriots 
concerned, that they would move for leave to bring in a bill for 
appointing commissioners to inspect into Bedlam^ and the parts 
adjacent; who shall be empowered to send for persons, papers, 
and records; to examine into the merits and qualifications of 
every student and professor ; to observe with utmost exactness 
their several dispositions and behavior; by which means duly 
distinguishing and adapting their talents, they might produce 
admirable instruments for the several offices in a state. . . . 

Is any student tearing his straw in piecemeal, swearing and 
blaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth? Let the 
right worshipful the Commissioners of Inspection give him a 
regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders among the 

1 Leading Tories. * The insane asylum. 



76 JONATHAN SWIFT 

rest. Is another eternally talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, 
in a sound without period or article? What wonderful talents 
are here mislaid! Let him be furnished immediately with a 
green bag and papers, and threepence in his pocket, and away 
with him to Westminster Hall.^ . , . Accost the hole of an- 
other kennel (first stopping your nose) , you will behold a surly, 
gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal. The student of this apartment 
is very sparing of his words, but somewhat over-liberal of his 
breath; he holds his hand out ready to receive your penny, and 
immediately upon receipt withdraws to his former occupations. 
Now is it not amazing to think the Society of Warwick Lane ^ 
should have no more concern for the recovery of so useful a 
member? who, if one may judge from these appearances, would 
become the greatest ornament to that illustrious body? . . . 



AN ARGUMENT TO PROVE THAT 
THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND 

. MAY, AS THINGS NOW STAND, BE ATTENDED WITH 
SOME INCONVENIENCES, AND PERHAPS NOT 
PRODUCE THOSE MANY GOOD EFFECTS 
PROPOSED THEREBY 

1708 

[This was one of several pamphlets by Swift on religious subjects which 
appeared in 1708. It represents his work in defense of the Church of Eng- 
land, especially as opposed to the Deists, who at this time were becoming 
influential, as the Tale of a Tub had been directed against Roman Catholics 
and Dissenters. Leading deistical writers are referred to in the tract: To- 
land, author of Christianity not Mysterious (1605), and Tindal, author of 
Rights of the Christian Church (1706) ; together with Dr. William Coward, 
who had published an essay denying immortality (1702). For the stu- 
dent of literature the importance of the pamphlet is in its exhibition of 
Swift's masterful irony.] 

I AM very sensible what a weakness and presumption it is to 
reason against the general humor and disposition of the world. 
I remember it was with great justice, and due regard to the 
freedom both of the public and the press, forbidden upon sev- 
eral penalties to write, or discourse, or lay wagers against the 
Union, even before it was confirmed by Parliament, because 

1 Where the law courts sat. ' The College of Physiciaas. 



THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY 77 

that was looked upon as a design to oppose the current of the 
people, — which, besides the folly of it, is a manifest breach of 
the fundamental law that makes this majority of opinion the 
voice of God. In Jike manner, and for the very same reasons, it 
may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent to argue against the 
aboHshing of Christianity, at a juncture when all parties seem 
so unanimously determined upon the point, as we cannot but 
allow from their actions, their discourses, and their writings. 
However, I know not how, whether from the affectation of sin- 
gularity, or the perverseness of human nature, but so it unhap- 
pily falls out, that I cannot be entirely of this opinion. Nay, 
though I were sure an order were issued for my immediate pro- 
secution by the Attorney- General, I should still confess that, 
in the present posture of our affairs at home or abroad, I do not 
yet see the absolute necessity of extirpating the Christian re- 
hgion from among us. 

This may perhaps appear too great a paradox even for our 
wise and paradoxical age to endure; therefore I shall handle it 
with all tenderness, and with the utmost deference to that great 
and profound majority which is of another sentiment. 

And yet the curious may please to observe how much the 
genius of a nation is liable to alter in half an age. I have heard 
it affirmed for certain, by some very old people, that the con- 
trary opinion was even in their memories as much in vogue as 
the other is now, and that a project for the abolishing of Chris- 
tianity would then have appeared as singular, and been thought 
as absurd, as it would be at this time to write or discourse in 
its defense. 

Therefore I freely own that all appearances are against me. 
The system of the gospel, after the fate of other systems, is gen- 
erally antiquated and exploded; and the mass or body of the 
common people, among whom it seems to have had its latest 
credit, are now grown as much ashamed of it as their betters; 
opinions, like fashions, always descending from those of quality 
to the middle sort, and thence to the vulgar, where at length 
they are dropped and vanish. 

But here I would not be mistaken, and must therefore be so 
bold as to borrow a distinction from the writers on the other 
side, when they make a difference between nominal and real 
Trinitarians. I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand 






78 ^/ »K JONATHAN SWIFT 

T 

up in the defense of real Christianity, such as used, in primitive 
times (if we may beheve the authors of those ages) , to have an 
influence upon men's belief and actions. To offer at the restor- 
ing of that, would indeed be a wild project; it would be to dig 
up foundations; to destroy, at one blow, all the wit, and half 
the learning, of the kingdom ; to break the entire frame and con- 
stitution of things; to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, 
with the professors of them; in short, to turn our courts, ex- 
changes, and shops, into deserts; and would be full as absurd as 
the proposal of Horace, where he advises the Romans, all in a 
body, to leave their city, and seek a new seat in some remote 
part of the world, by way of cure for the corruption of their 
manners. 

Therefore I think this caution was in itself altogether unne- 
cessary (which I have inserted only to prevent all possibility of 
caviling) , since every candid reader will easily understand my 
discourse to be intended only in defense of nominal Christian- 
ity; the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by 
general consent, as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes 
of wealth and power. 

But why we should therefore cast off the name and title of 
Christians, although the general opinion and resolution be so 
violent for it, I confess I cannot (with submission) apprehend; 
nor is the consequence necessary. However, since the under- 
takers propose such wonderful advantages to the nation by this 
project, and advance many plausible objections against the 
system of Christianity, I shall briefly consider the strength of 
both, fairly allow them their greatest weight, and offer such 
answers as I think most reasonable. After which I will beg 
leave to show what inconveniences may possibly happen by 
such an innovation, in the present posture of our affairs. 
^, First, one great advantage proposed by the aboKshing of 
Christianity is, that it would very much enlarge and establish 
liberty of conscience, that great bulwark of our nation, and of 
the Protestant religion, which is still too much limited by priest- 
craft, notwithstanding all the good intentions of the legisla- 
ture, as we have lately found by a severe instance. For it is 
confidently reported that two young gentlemen of real hopes, 
bright wit, and profound judgment, who, upon a thorough 
examination of causes and effects, and by the mere force of 



THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY 79 

natural abilities, without the least tincture of learning, having 
made a discovery that there was no God, and generously com- 
municating their thoughts for the good of the public, were 
some time ago, by an unparalleled severity, and upon I know 
not what obsolete law, broke^ for blasphemy. And, as it has 
been wisely observed, if persecution once begins, no man ahve 
knows how far it may reach, or where it will end. 

In answer to all which, with deference to wiser judgments, I 
think this rather shows the necessity of a nominal religion 
among us. Great wits love to be free with the highest objects; 
and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they 
will speak evil of dignities, abuse the government, and reflect 
upon the ministry; which I am sure few will deny to be of much 
more pernicious consequence, — according to the saying of 
Tiberius, deorum ojfensa diis curcer As to the particular fact 
related, I think it is not fair to argue from one instance; per- 
haps another cannot be produced; yet (to the comfort of all 
those who may be apprehensive of persecution) blasphemy, we 
know, is freely spoken a million of times in every coffeehouse 
and tavern, or wherever else good company meet. It must be 
allowed, indeed, that to break an English free-born officer, only 
for blasphemy, was, to speak the gentlest of such an action, a 
very high strain of absolute power. Little can be said in excuse 
for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might give offense to 
the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may be the cus- 
tom of the country to believe a God. But if he argued, as some 
have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer who is 
guilty of speaking blasphemy may some time or other proceed 
so far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to 
be admitted ; for surely the commander of an English army is 
likely to be but ill obeyed, whose soldiers fear and reverence 
him as Httle as they do a Deity. 

It is farther objected against the gospel system, that it 
obhges men to the behef of things too difficult for free-thinkers, 
and such who have shaken off the prejudices that usually cling 
to a confined education. To which I answer, that men should 
be cautious how they raise objections which reflect upon the 
wisdom of the nation. Is not everybody freely allowed to be- 
lieve whatever he pleases, and to publish his belief to the world 

' Cashiered. 2 "Wrongs done to the gods are the gods' concern." 



8o JONATHAN SWIFT 

whenever he thinks fit, especially if it serves to strengthen the . 
party which is in the right? Would any indifferent foreigner, ^ ^ 
who should read the trumpery lately written by AsgilV Tindal, ^ 
Toland, Coward, and forty more, imagine the gospel to be our 
rule of faith, and confirmed by parliaments? Does any man 
either believe, or say he believes, or desire to have it thought 
that he says he beHeves, one syllable of the matter? And is any 
man worse received upon that score, or does he find his want of 
nominal faith a disadvantage to him, in the pursuit of any civil 
or military employment? What if there be an old dormant 
statute or two against him, are they not now obsolete to a de- 
gree that Empson and Dudley ^ themselves, if they were now 
aUve, would find it impossible to put them in execution ? 

It is likewise urged that there are, by computation, in this 
kingdom, above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added 
to those of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at 
least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure and 
free-thinking, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedan- 
try, and prejudices, who might be an ornament to the court 
and town; and then again, so great a number of able (bodied) 
divines might be a recruit to our fleet and armies. This indeed 
appears to be a consideration of some weight; but then, on the 
other side, several things deserve to be considered likewise: as 
first, whether it may not be thought necessary that in certain 
tracts of country, like what we call parishes, there shall be one 
man at least of abilities to read and write. Then it seems a 
wrong computation that the revenues of the church through- 
out this island would be large enough to maintain two hundred 
young gentlemen, or even half that number, after the present 
refined way of living, — that is, to allow each of them such a 
rent as, in the modern form of speech, would make them easy. 
But still there is in this project a greater mischief behind; and 
we ought to beware of the woman's folly who killed the hen that 
every morning laid her a golden egg. For pray what would be- ^ 
come of the race of men in the next age, if we had nothing to 
trust beside the scrofulous, consumptive productions, furnished 
by our men of wit and pleasure, when, having squandered away 
their vigor, health, and estates, they are forced, by some dis- 

1 An eccentric writer, whose book called An Argument to prove that death is not obliga- 
tory on Christians, was burned by order of the House of Commons. 

2 Extortionate tax-collectors for Henry VII. 



THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY 8i 

agreeable marriage, to piece up their broken fortunes, and entail 
rottenness and politeness on their posterity? Now, here are ten 
thousand persons reduced, by the wise regulations of Henry 
the Eighth, ^ to the necessity of a low diet and moderate exercise, 
who are the only great restorers of our breed, without which 
the nation would, in an age or two, become one great hospital. 

Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christian- 
ity is the clear gain of one day in seven, which is now entirely 
lost, and consequently the kingdom one serenth less consider- 
able in trade, business, and pleasure; beside the loss to the pub- 
He of so many stately structures, now in the hands of the clergy, 
which might be converted into playhouses, market-houses, ex- 
changes, common dormitories, and other public edifices. 

I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word, if I call this a perfect 
cavil. I readily own there has been an old custom, time out of 
mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and 
that shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, 
to preserve the memory of that ancient practice ; but how this 
can prove a hindrance to business or pleasure, is hard to imagine. 
What if the men of pleasure are forced, one day in the week, 
to game at home instead of the chocolate-houses ? are not the 
taverns and coffee-houses open ? Can there be a more conven- 
ient season for taking a dose of physic ? Is not that the chief 
day for traders to sum up the accounts of the week, and for law- 
yers to prepare their briefs ? But I would fain know how it can 
be pretended that the churches are misapplied ? Where are 
more appointments and rendezvouses of gallantry ? Where 
more care to appear in the foremost box, with greater advan- 
tage of dress ? where more meetings for business ? where more 
bargains driven of all sorts ? and A/vhere so many conveniences 
or enticements to sleep ? ' 

There is one advantage, greater than any of the foregoing, 
proposed by the abolishing of Christianity, — that it will ut- 
terly extinguish parties among us, by removing those factious 
distinctions of high and low church, of Whig, and Tory, Presby- 
terian and Church of England, which are now so many griev- 
ous clogs upon pubUc proceedings, and are apt to dispose men 
to prefer the gratifying of themselves, or depressing of their ad- 
versaries, before the most important interest of the state. 

' Depriving the church of its revenues. 



82 JONATHAN SWIFT 

I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would 
redound to the nation by this expedient, I would submit and be 
silent; but will any man say that if the words whoring, drinking, 
cheating, lying, stealing were by Act of Parliament ejected out 
of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next 
morning chaste and temperate, honest and just, and lovers of 
truth ? Is this a fair consequence ? Or, if the physicians would 
forbid us to pronounce the words gout, rheumatism, and stone, 
would that expedient serve, like so many talismans, to destroy 
the diseases themselves ? Are party and faction in men's hearts 
no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded 
upon no firmer principles ? And is our language so poor that we 
cannot find other terms to express them ? Are envy, pride, avar- 
ice, and ambition such ill nomenclators that they cannot furnish 
appellations for their owners ? Will not heydukes and mame- 
lukes, mandarins, and patshaws, or any other words formed at 
pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the ministry 
from others who would be in it if they could ? What, for in- 
stance, is easier than to vary the form of speech, and instead of 
the word church, make it a question in politics, whether the 
Monument be in danger ? Because religion was nearest at hand 
to furnish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so barren 
we can find no other ? Suppose, for argument sake, that the To- 
ries favored Margarita, the Whigs Mrs. Tofts, and the trim- 
mers Valentini;^ would not Margarilians, Toftians, and Valen- 
tinians be very tolerable marks of distinction? The Prasini and 
Veniti, two most virulent factions in Italy, began (if I remember 
right) by a distinction of colors in ribbons ; and we might con- 
tend with as good a grace about the dignity of the blue and the 
green, which would serve as properly to divide the court, the 
parliament, and the kingdom, between them, as any terms of 
art whatsoever, borrowed from religion. And therefore I think 
there is little force in this objection against Christianity, or 
prospect of so great an advantage as is proposed in the abolish- 
ing of it. 

It is again objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that 
a set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, 
to bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those meth- 
ods most in use, toward the pursuit of greatness, riches, and 

* Opera singers of the period. 



THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY 83 

pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men alive on the 
other six. But this objection is, I think, a little unworthy of so 
refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter calmly: I ap- 
peal to the breast of any polite free-thinker, whether, in the 
pursuit of gratifying a predominant passion, he has not always 
a wonderful incitement, by reflecting it was a thing forbidden ; 
and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste, the wis- 
dom of the nation has taken special care that the ladies should 
be furnished with prohibited silks, and the men with prohibited 
wine. And indeed it were to be wished that some other pro- 
hibitions were promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of 
the town; which, for want of such expedients, begin already, as 
I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving way daily to cruel 
inroads from the spleen. 

It is likewise proposed as a great advantage to the public, 
that, if we once discard the system of the gospel, all religion will 
of course be banished for ever; and consequently, ^ong with it, 
those grievous prejudices of education, which, under the names 
of virtue, conscience, honor, justice, and the Hke, are so apt to dis- 
turb the peace of human minds, and the notions whereof are so 
hard to be eradicated, by right reason, or free- thinking, some- 
times during the whole course of our lives. 

Here first I observe, how difficult it is to get rid of a phrase 
which the world is once grown fond of, though the occasion that 
first produced it be entirely taken away. For several years past, 
if a man had but an ill-favored nose, the deep thinkers of the 
age would, some way or other, contrive to impute the cause to 
the prejudice of his education. From this fountain were said 
to be derived all our foolish notions of justice, piety, love of our 
country; all our opinions of God, or a future state, heaven, hell, 
and the like ; and there might formerly perhaps have been some 
pretence for this charge. But so effectual care has been taken 
to remove those prejudices, by an entire change in the methods 
of education, that (with honor I mention it to our polite inno- 
vators) the young gentlemen who are now on the scene seem to 
have not the least tincture left of those infusions, or string of 
those weeds; and, by consequence, the reason for abolishing 
nominal Christianity upon that pretext is wholly ceased. 

For the rest, it may perhaps admit a controversy, whether 
the banishing of all notions of religion whatsoever, would be 



T 



84 JONATHAN SWIFT 

convenient for the vulgar. Not that I am in the least of opin- 
ion with those who hold religion to have been the invention of 
politicians, to keep the lower part of the world in awe, by the 
fear of invisible powers ; unless mankind were then very differ- 
ent to what it is now ; for I look upon the mass or body of our 
people here in England, to be as free thinkers, that is to say, as 
staunch unbelievers, as any of the highest rank. But I con- 
ceive some scattered notions about a superior power to be of 
singular use for the common people, as furnishing excellent ma- 
terials to keep children quiet when they grow peevish, and pro- 
viding topics of amusement in a tedious winter night. 

Lastly, it is proposed, as a singular advantage, that the abol- 
/ ishing of Christianity will very much contribute to the uniting 
of Protestants, by enlarging the terms of communion, so as to 
take in all sorts of dissenters, who are now shut out of the pale, 
upon account of a few ceremonies which all sides confess to be 
things indifferent; that this alone will effectually answer the 
great ends of a scheme for comprehension, by opening a large 
noble gate, at which all bodies may enter; whereas the chaffer- 
ing with dissenters, and dodging about this or the other cere- 
mony, is but Hke opening a few wickets, and leaving them at 
jar, by which no more than one can get in at a time, and that 
not without stooping, and sidling, and squeezing his body. 

To all this I answer that there is one darhng inclination of 
mankind, which usually affects to be a retainer to religion, 
though she be neither its parent, its godmother, or its friend; 
I mean the spirit of opposition, that lived long before Chris- 
tianity, and can easily subsist without it. Let us, for instance, 
examine wherein the opposition of sectaries among us con- 
sists; we shall find Christianity to have no share in it at all. 
Does the gospel anywhere prescribe a starched, squeezed coun- 
tenance, a stiff, formal gait, a singularity of manners and habit, 
or any affected modes of speech, different from the reasonable 
part of mankind ? Yet, if Christianity did not lend its name 
to stand in the gap, and to employ or divert these humors, they 
must of necessity be spent in contraventions to the laws of the 
land, and disturbance of the pubUc peace. There is a portion of 
enthusiasm assigned to every nation, which, if it has not proper 
objects to work on, will burst out, and set all in a flame. If the 
quiet of a state can be bought, by only flinging men a few cere- 



THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY 85 

monies to devour, it is a purchase no wise man would refuse. 
Let the mastiffs amuse themselves about a sheep's skin stuffed 
with hay, provided it will keep them from worrying the flock. 
The constitution of convents abroad seems, in one point, a strain 
of great wisdom; there being few irregularities in human pas- 
sions that may not have recourse to vent themselves in some 
of those orders, which are so many retreats for the speculative, 
the melancholy, the proud, the silent, the poHtic, and the mo- 
rose, to spend themselves, and evaporate the noxious parti- 
cles; for each of whom we, in this island, are forced to provide 
a several sect of religion, to keep them quiet; and whenever 
Christianity shall be abolished, the legislature must find some 
other expedient to employ and entertain them. For what im- 
ports it how large a gate you open, if there will be always left a 
number who place a pride and a merit in refusing to enter ? 

Having thus considered the most important objections 
against Christianity, and the chief advantages proposed by the 
abolishing thereof, I shall now, with equal deference and sub- 
mission to wiser judgments, as before, proceed to mention a few 
inconveniences that may happen, if the gospel should be re- 
pealed, which perhaps the projectors may not have sufficiently J f^' 
considered. 

And first, I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit 
and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of 
so many daggled-tail parsons, who happen to fall in their way, 
and offend their eyes; but at the same time these wise reform- 
ers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great 
wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, 
in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their 
spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves; especially 
when all this may be done without the least imaginable danger 
to their persons. 

And to urge another argument of a parallel nature : if Chris- 
tianity were once aboKshed, how could the free-thinkers, the 
strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to 
find another subject, so calculated in all points, whereon to dis- 
play their abilities ? What wonderful productions of wit should 
we be deprived of, from those whose genius, by continual prac- 
tice, has been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against 
rehgion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distin- 



86 JONATHAN SWIFT 

guish themselves upon any other subject ! We are daily com- 
plaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we 
take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic, we have left ? 
Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit, or Toland for 
a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not 
been at hand, to provide them with materials ? What other sub- 
ject, through all art or nature, could have produced Tindal for a 
profound author, or furnished him with readers ? It is the wise 
choice of the subject, that alone adorns and distinguishes the 
writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been employed 
on the side of rehgion, they would have immediately sunk into 
silence and oblivion. . . . 

And therefore, if notwithstanding all I have said it still be 
thought necessary to have a bill brought in for repealing Chris- 
tianity, I would humbly offer an amendment, that, instead of 
the word Christianity, may be put religion in general; which, I 
conceive, will much better answer all the good ends proposed 
by the projectors of it. For, as long as we leave in being a God 
and His providence, with all the necessary consequences which 
curious and inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such pre- 
mises, we do not strike at the root of the evil, though we should 
ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of the gospel. 
For of what use is freedom of thought, if it will not produce 
freedom of action ? — which is the sole end, how remote soever 
in appearance, of all objections against Christianity; and there- 
fore the free-thinkers consider it as a sort of edifice, wherein all 
the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if 
you happen to pull out one single nail, the whole fabric must 
fall to the ground. This was happily expressed by him who had 
heard of a text brought for proof of the Trinity, which in an an- 
cient manuscript was differently read; he thereupon immedi- 
ately took the hint, and, by a sudden deduction of a long sorites, 
most logically concluded : "Why, if it be as you say, I may safely 
whore and drink on, and defy the parson." From which, and 
many the like instances easy to be produced, I think nothing 
can be more manifest, than that the quarrel is not against any 
particular points of hard digestion in the Christian system, 
but against religion in general; which, by laying restraints on 
human nature, is supposed the great enemy to the freedom of 
thought and action. 



THE ENGLISH TONGUE 87 

Upon the whole, if it shall be thought for the benefit of church 
and state that Christianity be abolished, I conceive, however, 
it may be more convenient to defer the execution to a time of 
peace; and not venture, in this conjuncture, to disoblige our 
allies, who, as it falls out, are all Christians, and many of them, 
by the prejudices of their education, so bigoted as to place a 
sort of pride in the appellation. If, upon being rejected by 
them, we are to trust an alliance with the Turk, we shall find 
ourselves much deceived: for, as he is too remote, and generally 
engaged in war with the Persian Emperor, so his people would 
be more scandalized at our infidelity than our Christian neigh- 
bors. For the Turks are not only strict observers of religious 
worship, but, what is worse, believe a God, — which is more 
than is required of us, even while we preserve the name of Chris- 
tians. 

To conclude : whatever some may think of the great advan- 
tages to trade by this favorite scheme, I do very much appre- 
hend that in six months' time after the act is passed for the ex- 
tirpation of the gospel, the Bank and East India stock may fall 
at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more than 
ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the pre- 
servation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so 
great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it. 



A PROPOSAL FOR CORRECTING, IMPROVING, AND 
ASCERTAINING THE ENGLISH TONGUE 

IN A LETTER TO THE MOST HONORABLE ROBERT, EARL 
OF OXFORD AND MORTIMER, LORD HIGH TREASURER 
OF GREAT BRITAIN 

I712 

[This was the first of Swift's publications which appeared over his ac- 
knowledged name. His correspondence shows that he took his proposal 
very seriously; but nothing came of it. It was sagaciously criticised 
by Dr. Johnson in his Life of Swift.] 

. . . The period wherein the English tongue received most 
improvement, I take to commence with the beginning of Queen 
Elizabeth's reign, and to conclude with the great rebellion in 



88 JONATHAN SWIFT 

forty-two. It is true there was a very ill taste, both of style 
and wit, which prevailed under King James the First, but that 
seems to have been corrected in the first years of his successor, 
who, among many other qualifications of an excellent prince, 
was a great patron of learning. From the Civil War to this 
present time, I am apt to doubt whether the corruptions in our 
language have not at least equaled the refinements of it, and 
these corruptions very few of the best authors in our age have 
wholly escaped. 

During the usurpation, such an infusion of enthusiastic jargon 
prevailed in every writing, as was not shaken off in many years 
after. To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered 
with the Restoration, and, from infecting our religion and mor- 
als, fell to corrupt our language ; which last was not likely to be 
much improved by those who at that time made up the court of 
King Charles the Second, — either such who had followed him 
in his banishment, or who had been altogether conversant in 
the dialect of those fanatic times, or young men, who had been 
educated in the same country; so that the court, which used to 
be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was 
then, and, I think, has ever since continued, the worst school 
in England for that accomplishment, and so will remain till bet- 
ter care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that 
they may set out into the world with some foundation of litera- 
ture, in order to qualify them for patterns of pohteness. The 
consequence of this defect upon our language may appear 
from the plays, and other compositions written for entertain- 
ment, within fifty years past, filled with a succession of affected 
phrases, and new conceited words, either borrowed from the 
current style of the court, or from those who, under the char- 
acter of men of wit and pleasure, pretended to give the law. 
Many of these refinements have already been long antiquated, 
and are now hardly intelligible, — which is no wonder, when 
they were the product only of ignorance and caprice. 

I have never known this great town without one or more 
dunces of figure, who had credit enough to give rise to some 
new word, and propagate it in most conversations, though it 
had neither humor nor significancy. If it struck the present 
taste, it was soon transferred into the plays and current scrib- 
bles of the week, and became an addition to our language; while 



THE ENGLISH TONGUE 89 

the men of wit and learning, instead of early obviating such 
corruptions, were too often seduced to imitate and comply with 
them. 

V There is another set of men who have contributed very 
much to the spoiling of the English tongue; I mean the poets, 
from the time of the Restoration. These gentlemen, although 
they could not be insensible how much our language was al- 
ready overstocked with monosyllables, yet, to save time and 
pains, introduced that barbarous custom of abbreviating words 
to fit them to the measure of their verses; and this they have 
frequently done so very injudiciously as to form such harsh, 
unharmonious sounds, that none but a northern ear could en- 
dure. They have joined the most obdurate consonants with 
one intervening vowel, only to shorten a syllable; and their 
taste in time became so depraved that what was at first a poeti- 
cal license, not to be justified, they made their choice, alleging 
that words pronounced at length sounded faint and languid. 
This was a pretence to take up the same custom in prose, so 
that most of the books we see nowadays are full of those man- 
glings and abbreviations. Instances of this abuse are innumer- 
able; what does your lordship think of the words drudged, dis- 
turbed, rebuk'd, fledged, and a thousand others everywhere to be 
met with in prose as well as verse ? — where, by leaving out a 
vowel to save a syllable, we form so jarring a sound, and so diffi- 
cult to utter, that I have often wondered how it could ever ob- 
tain. 

Another cause (and perhaps borrowed from the former) 
which has contributed not a little to the maiming of our lan- 
guage, is a foolish opinion, advanced of late years, that we 
ought to spell exactly as we speak; which, beside the obvious 
inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a 
thing we should never see an end of. Not only the several 
towns and counties of England have a different way of pro- 
nouncing, but even here in London they clip their words after 
one manner about the court, another in the City, and a third 
in the suburbs; and in a few years, it is probable, will all differ 
from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct, — all which, 
reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography. Yet 
many people are so fond of thi? conceit that it is sometimes a 
difficult matter to read modern books and pamphlets, where 



90 JONATHAN SWIFT 

the words are so curtailed, and varied from their original spell- 
ing, that whoever has been used to plain English will hardly 
know them by sight. 

Several young men at the universities, terribly possessed 
with the fear of pedantry, run into a worse extreme, and think 
all politeness to consist in reading the daily trash sent down 
to them from hence; this they call knowing the world, and read- 
ing men and manners. Thus furnished, they come up to town, 
reckon all their errors for accomplishments, borrow the newest 
set of phrases; and, if they take a pen into their hands, all the 
odd words they have picked up in a coffee-house, or a gaming 
ordinary, are produced as flowers of style, — and the ortho- 
graphy refined to the utmost. ... To this we owe that strange 
race of wits who tell us they write to the humor of the age. And 
I wish I could say these quaint fopperies were wholly absent 
from graver subjects. In short, I would undertake to show 
your lordship several pieces where the beauties of this kind are 
so predominant that, with all your skill in languages, you could 
never be able to read or understand them. . . . 

In order to reform our language, I conceive, my lord, that a 
free judicious choice should be made of such persons as are gen- 
erally allowed to be best qualified for such a work, without any 
regard to quality, party, or profession. These, to a certain num- 
ber at least, should assemble at some appointed time and place, 
and fix on rules by which they design to proceed. What meth- 
ods they will take is not for me to prescribe. Your lordship, 
and other persons in great employments, might please to be of 
the number; and I am afraid such a society would want your 
instruction and example, as much as your protection, for I have, 
not without a little envy, observed of late the style of some 
great ministers very much to exceed that of any other produc- 
tions. 

1. The persons who are to undertake this work will have the ex- 
ample of the French before them, to imitate where these have 
proceeded right, and to avoid their mistakes. Beside the gram- 
mar part, wherein we are allowed to be very defective, they will 
observe many gross improprieties which, however authorized 
by practice, and grown familiar, ought to be discarded. They 
will find many words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of 
our language, many more to be corrected, and perhaps not a 



THE ENGLISH TONGUE 91 

few long since antiquated, which ought to be restored on ac- 
count of their energy and sound. 

But what I have most at heart is, that some method should 
be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever, 
after such alterations are made in it as shall be thought requi- 
site. For I am of opinion it is better a language should not be 
wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing; 
and we must give over at one time, or at length infallibly 
change for the worse; as the Romans did, when they began to 
quit their simplicity of style for affected refinements, such as 
we meet in Tacitus and other authors, which ended by degrees 
in many barbarities, even before the Goths had invaded Italy. 

The fame of our writers is usually confined to these two is- 
lands, and it is hard it should be limited in time, as much as 
place, by the perpetual variations of our speech. It is your 
lordship's observation, that if it were not for the Bible and 
Common Prayer Book in the vulgar tongue, we should hardly 
be able to understand anything that was written among us a 
hundred years ago; which is certainly true, for those books, be- 
ing perpetually read in churches, have proved a kind of stand- 
ard for language, especially to the common people. And I doubt 
whether the alterations since introduced have added much to 
the beauty or strength of the English tongue, though they have 
taken off a great deal from that simplicity which is one of the 
greatest perfections in any language. You, my lord, who are so 
conversant in the sacred writings, and so great a judge of them 
in their originals, will agree that no translation our country ever 
yet produced has come up to that of the Old and New Testa- 
ment; and by the many beautiful passages which I have often 
had the honor to hear your lordship cite from thence, I am per- 
suaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an 
English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our 
present writings, — which I take to be owing to the simplicity 
that runs through the whole. Then, as to the greatest part of 
our Uturgy, compiled long before the translation of the Bible 
now in use, and Httle altered since, there seem to be in it as 
great strains of true sublime eloquence as are anywhere to be 
found in our language, which every man of good taste will ob- 
serve in the communion service, that of burial, and other parts. 

But when I say that I would have our language, after it is 



92 JONATHAN SWIFT 

duly correct, always to last, I do not mean that it should never 
be enlarged. Provided that no word which a society shall give 
a sanction to, be afterward antiquated and exploded, they may 
have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occa- 
sion for; because then the old books will yet be always valuable 
according to their intrinsic worth, and not thrown aside on ac- 
count of unintelligible words and phrases, which appear harsh 
and uncouth only because they are out of fashion. Had the 
Roman tongue continued vulgar in that city till this time, it 
would have been absolutely necessary, from the mighty changes 
that have been made in law and religion, from the many terms 
of art required in trade and in war, from the new inventions 
that have happened in the world, from the vast spreading of 
navigation and commerce, with many other obvious circum- 
stances, to have made great additions to that language; yet the 
ancients would still have been read and understood with plea- 
sure and ease. The Greek tongue received many enlargements 
between the time of Homer and that of Plutarch, yet the former 
author was probably as well understood in Trajan's time as the 
latter. What Horace says of words going off and perishing like 
leaves, and new ones coming in their place, is a misfortune he 
laments, rather than a thing that he approves. But I cannot 
see why this should be absolutely necessary; or if it were, what 
would have become of his monujnentum (Ere perennius ?^ 

Writing by memory only, as I do at present, I would gladly 
keep within my depth, and therefore shall not enter into farther 
particulars. Neither do I pretend more than to show the use- 
fulness of this design, and to make some general observations, 
leaving the rest to that society, which I hope will owe its in- 
stitution and patronage to your lordship. Besides, I would 
willingly avoid repetition, having, about a year ago, com- 
municated to the pubHc much of what I had to offer upon this 
subject, by the hands of an ingenious gentleman who for a long 
time did thrice a week divert or instruct the kingdom by his 
papers, and is supposed to pursue the same design at present, 
under the title of Spectator. This author, who has tried the 
force and compass of our language with so much success, agrees 
entirely with me in most of my sentiments relating to it. So do 
the greatest part of the men of wit and learning whom I have 

* "Monument more enduring than bronze." 



THE ENGLISH TONGUE 93 

had the happiness to converse with; and therefore I imagine 
that such a society would be pretty unanimous in the main 
points. . . . 

As barbarous and ignorant as we were in former centuries, 
there was more effectual care taken by our ancestors to pre- 
serve the memory of times and persons, than we find in this age 
of learning and politeness, as we are pleased to call it. The rude 
Latin of the monks is still very intelligible; whereas, had their 
records been delivered down only in the vulgar tongue, so bar- 
ren and so barbarous, so subject to continual succeeding changes, 
they could not now be understood, unless by antiquaries who 
make it their study to expound them. And we must, at this 
day, have been content with such poor abstracts of our English 
story as laborious men of low genius would think fit to give us ; 
and even these, in the next age, would be likewise swallowed 
up in succeeding collections. If things go on at this rate, all I 
can promise your lordship is, that, about two hundred years 
hence, some painful compiler, who will be at the trouble of 
studying old language, may inform the world that, in the reign 
of Queen Anne, Robert, Earl of Oxford, a very wise and excel- 
lent man, was made High Treasurer, and saved his country, 
which in those days was almost ruined by a foreign war and a 
domestic faction. Thus much he may be able to pick out, and 
willing to transfer into his new history; but the rest of your char- 
acter, which I or any other writer may now value ourselves by 
drawing, and the particular account of the great things done 
under your ministry, for which you are already so celebrated 
in most parts of Europe, will probably be dropped, on account 
of the antiquated style and manner they are delivered in. 

How then shall any man, who has a genius for history equal 
to the best of the ancients, be able to undertake such a work 
with spirit and cheerfulness, when he considers that he will be 
read with pleasure but a very few years, and, in an age or two, 
shall hardly be understood without an interpreter? This is like 
employing an excellent statuary to work upon mouldering 
stone. Those who apply their studies to preserve the memory 
of others, will always have some concern for their own; and I 
believe it is for this reason that so few writers among us, of any 
distinction, have turned their thoughts to such a discouraging 
employment; for the best English historian must He under this 



94 JONATHAN SWIFT 

mortification, — that when his style grows antiquated, he will 
be only considered as a tedious relater of facts, and perhaps 
consulted, in his turn, among other neglected authors, to fur- 
nish materials for some future collector. . . . 



TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL REMOTE NATIONS OF 
THE WORLD 

IN FOUR PARTS. BY LEMUEL GULLIVER 

1726 

[This book had been begun about 1720, and was known to Swift's 
friends sometime before its publication. It appears to have been the only 
one of his works for which he received pay, — £200, obtained through 
Pope's intervention. The Travels are divided into four parts: A Voyage to 
Lilliput; A Voyage to Brobdingnag; A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, 
Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan; A Voyage to the Country of the 
Houyhnhnms. In the first part Swift satirizes humanity by representing 
it as appearing contemptible in the eyes of creatures very much smaller 
than we; in the second part by representing it as equally contemptible 
when viewed through the other end of the telescope, — by creatures very 
much larger; in the third part he satirizes especially the intellectual efforts 
of the race, and its longings for immortality; in the fourth part he repre- 
sents humanity as infinitely contemptible from the standpoint of a com- 
monwealth of horses (human beings appearing in the loathsome form of 
"Yahoos"). The first two parts are universally known as brilliant exam- 
ples of circumstantial fiction; the third and fourth parts are less attractive, 
but more characteristic, from the increased virulence of their satire. The 
following extracts are from the Voyage to Laputa and Balnibarbi (chap- 
ters II, IV, v) and the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms (chapters v and vi).] 

[laputa] 

At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people; 
but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quahty. 
They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of won- 
der; neither, indeed, was I much in their debt, having never 
till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, 
and countenances. Their heads were all rechned either to the 
right or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other 
directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned 
with the figures of suns, moons, and stars, interwoven with 
those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, 
and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Eu- 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 95 

rope. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of ser- 
vants, with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a 
short stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder 
was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles (as I was 
afterwards informed) . With these bladders they now and then 
flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of 
which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems 
the minds of these people are so taken up with intense specula- 
tions, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses 
of others, without being roused by some external taction upon 
the organs of speech and hearing ; for which reason those persons 
who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is 
dimenole) in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever 
walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of 
this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, 
gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to 
speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker 
addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed dihgently 
to attend his master in his walks, and, upon occasion, to give 
him a soft flap on his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up 
in cogitation that he is in manifest danger of falling down every 
precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in 
the streets, of josthng others, or being jostled himself, into the 
kennel. 

It was necessary to give the reader this information, without 
which he would be at the same loss with me to understand the 
proceedings of these people, as they conducted me up the stairs 
to the top of the island, and from thence to the royal palace. 
While we were ascending, they forgot several times what they 
were about, and left me to myself, till their memories were again 
roused by their flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved 
by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the 
shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more dis- 
engaged. 

At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the cham- 
ber of presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, at- 
tended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the 
throne was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and 
mathematical instruments of all kinds. His Majesty took not 
the least notice of us, although our entrance was not without 



96 JONATHAN SWIFT 

sufficient noise, by the concourse of all persons belonging to the 
court. But he was then deep in a problem, and we attended 
at least an hour before he could solve it. There stood by him 
on each side a young page, with flaps in their hands, and, when 
they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, 
and the other his right ear ; at which he started hke one awaked 
on the sudden, and looking towards me, and the company I was 
in, recollected the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been 
informed before. He spoke some words, whereupon immedi- 
ately a young man with a flap came up to my side, and flapped 
me gently on the right ear, but I made signs, as well as I could, 
that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I after- 
wards found, gave his Majesty, and the whole court, a very 
mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could 
conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself 
to him in all the languages I had. When it was found that I 
could neither understand nor be understood, I was conducted, 
by his order, to an apartment in his palace (this prince being 
distinguished, above all his predecessors, for his hospitality to 
strangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me. 
My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I 
remembered to have seen very near the king's person, did me 
the honor to dine with me. We had two courses, of three dishes 
each. In the first course there was a shoulder of mutton, cut 
into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboid, and 
a pudding into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks, 
trussed up into the form of fiddles, sausages and puddings re- 
sembling flutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape 
of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones, cyhnders, 
parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures. 

While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of 
several things in their language, and those noble persons, by the 
assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hop- 
ing to raise my admiration of their great abilities, if I could be 
brought to converse with them. I was soon able to call for 
bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted. 

After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent 
to me, by the king's order, attended by a flapper. He brought 
with him pen, ink, and paper, and three or four books, giving 
me to understand by signs that he was sent to teach me the 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 97 

language. We sat together four hours, in which time I wrote 
down a great number of words in columns, with the transla- 
tions over against them ; I likewise made a shift to learn several 
short sentences. For my tutor would order one of my servants 
to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to 
stand, or walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in 
writing. He showed me also, in one of his books, the figures of 
the sun, moon, and stars, the Zodiac, the tropics, and polar cir- 
cles, together with the denominations of many figures of planes 
and solids. He gave me the names and descriptions of all the 
musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing 
on each of them. After he had left me, I placed all my words, 
with their interpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in 
a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some 
insight into their language. 

The word which I interpret the flying or floating island, is, 
in the original, laputa, whereof I could never learn the true ety- 
mology. Lap, in the old obsolete language, signifieth high, and 
untuh, a governor, from which they say, by corruption, was de- 
rived laputa, from lapuntuh. But I do not approve of this deri- 
vation, which seems to be a little strained. I ventured to offer 
to the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that laputa 
was quasi lap outed ; lap signifying properly the dancing of the 
sun-beams in the sea, and outed a wing; which, however, I shall 
not obtrude, but submit to the judicious reader. 

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill 
I was clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning and take my 
measure for a suit of clothes. This operator did his office after 
a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first 
took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with rule and com- 
passes, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, 
all which he entered upon paper, and in six days brought my 
clothes — very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening 
to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was 
that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little re- 
garded. 

During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indis- 
position that held me some days longer, I much enlarged my 
dictionary; and, when I went next to court, was able to under- 
stand many things the king spoke, and to return him some kind 



98 JONATHAN SWIFT 

of answers. His Majesty had given orders that the islands 
should move north-east and by east, to the vertical point over 
Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below upon the 
firm earth. It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voy- 
age lasted four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible 
of the progressive motion made in the air by the island. On the 
second morning, about eleven o'clock, the king himself, in per- 
son, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having pre- 
pared all their musical instruments, played on them for three 
hours, without intermission, so that I was quite stunned with 
the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my 
tutor informed me. He said that the people of their island had 
their ears adapted to hear the music of the spheres, which al- 
ways played at certain periods, and the court was now pre- 
pared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most ex- 
celled. 

In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his Majesty 
ordered that the island should stop over certain towns and vil- 
lages, from whence he might receive the petitions of his sub- 
jects. And, to this purpose, several packthreads were let down, 
with small weights at the bottom. On these packthreads the 
people strung their petitions, which mounted up directly, like 
the scraps of paper fastened by schoolboys at the end of the 
string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine and 
victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys. 

The knowledge I had in mathematics gave me great assist- 
ance in acquiring their phraseology, which depended much 
upon that science and music; and in the latter I was not un- 
skilled. Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and 
figures. If they would, for example, praise the beauty of a wo- 
man, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, 
parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms; or by 
words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I ob- 
served, in the king's kitchen, all sorts of mathematical and 
musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the 
joints that were served to his Majesty's table. 

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, without one 
right angle in any apartment; and this defect ariseth from the 
contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise 
as vulgar and mechanic, those instructions they give being too 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 99 

refined for the intellectuals of their workmen, which occasions 
perpetual mistakes. And although they are dexterous enough 
upon a piece of paper in the management of the rule, the pencil, 
and the divader, yet, in the common actions and behavior of 
life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy 
people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all 
other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They 
are very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, 
unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is 
seldom their case. Imagination, fancy, and invention they are 
wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language by 
which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their 
thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned 
sciences. 

Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astrono- 
mical part, have great faith in judicial astrolog}^ although they 
are ashamed to own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, 
and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposi- 
tion I observed in them towards news and politics, perpetually 
inquiring into public affairs, giving their judgments in matters 
of state, and passionately disputing every inch of a party opin- 
ion. I have, indeed, observed the same disposition among most 
of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I 
could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences ; 
unless those people suppose that, because the smallest circle 
hath as many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation 
and management of the world require no more abilities than 
the handling and turning of a globe. But I rather take this 
quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human na- 
ture, inclining us to be more curious and conceited in matters 
where we have least concern, and for which we are least adapted 
either by study or nature. 

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoy- 
ing a minute's piece of mind; and their disturbances proceed 
from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their 
apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the ce- 
lestial bodies. For instance, that the earth, by the continual 
approaches of the sun towards it, must in course of time be ab- 
sorbed, or swallowed up. That the face of the sun will by de- 
grees be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light 



100 JONATHAN SWIFT 

to the world. That the earth very narrowly escaped a brush 
from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly re- 
duced it to ashes ; and that the next, which they have calculated 
for one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. For if 
in its perihelion it should approach within a certain degree of 
the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread), it 
will conceive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense 
than that of red-hot glowing iron, and, in its absence from the 
sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen 
miles long; through which if the earth should pass, at the dis- 
tance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus or main 
body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and re- 
duced to ashes. That the sun, daily spending its rays without 
any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed 
and annihilated ; which must be attended with the destruction 
of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from 
it. 

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of 
these and the hke impending dangers, that they can neither 
sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common 
pleasures or amusements of life. When they meet an acquaint- 
ance in the morning, the first question is about the sun's health, 
— how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they 
have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. This con- 
versation they are apt to run into with the same temper that 
boys discover in dehghting to hear terrible stories of spirits and 
hobgobhns, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to 
bed for fear. . . . 

[balnibarbi] 

This academy is not an entire single building, but a continu- 
ation of several houses on both sides of a street, which, growing 
waste, was purchased, and applied to that use. I was received 
very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the 
academy. Every room hath in it one or more projectors, — and 
I beheve I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms. 

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands 
and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several 
places. His clothes, shirt, and skin were all of the same color. 
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun- 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS loi 

beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials her- 
metically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement 
summers. He told me he did not doubt, in eight years more, he 
should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine 
at a reasonable rate ; but he complained that his stock was low, 
and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement 
to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season 
for cucumbers. I made him a small present, for my lord had 
furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their 
practice of begging from all who go to see them. . . . 

I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who like- 
wise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the mal- 
leabihty of fire, which he intended to publish. 

There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a 
new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof and 
working downwards to the foundation, which he justified to me 
by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and 
the spider. 

There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in 
his own condition ; their employment was to mix colors for paint- 
ers, which their master taught them to distinguish by feehng 
and smelling. It was, indeed, my misfortune to find them, at 
that time, not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor 
himseK happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much 
encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity. 

In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector 
who had found a device of plowing the ground with hogs, to 
save the charges of ploughs, cattle, and labor. The method is 
this: in an acre of ground, you bury, at six inches distance, and 
eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other 
mast, or vegetables, whereof these animals are fondest; then 
you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where, in 
few days, they will root up the whole ground in search of their 
food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it 
with their dung. It is true, upon experiment, they found the 
charge and trouble very great, and they had httle or no crop. 
However, it is not doubted that this invention may be capable 
of great improvement. 

I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were 
all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the 



I02 JONATHAN SWIFT 

artist to go in and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me 
not to disturb his webs. He lamented the fatal mistake the 
world had been so long in of using silk-worms, while we had 
such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the for- 
mer, because they understood how to weave as well as spin. And 
he proposed farther, that, by employing spiders, the charge of 
dyeing silks would be wholly saved; whereof I was fully con- 
vinced, when he showed me a vast number of flies most beauti- 
fully colored, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us that the 
webs would take a tincture from them ; and as he had them of 
all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could 
find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other 
glutinous matter, to give a strength and consistence to the 
threads. 

There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a 
sun-dial upon the great weather-cock on the town house, by ad- 
justing the annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so 
as to answer and coincide with all accidental turnings of the 
wind. . . . 

I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my 
reader with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of 
brevity. 

I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other 
being appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of 
whom I shall say something, when I have mentioned one illus- 
trious person more, who is called among them "the universal 
artist." He told us he had been thirty years employing his 
thoughts for the improvement of human life. He had two 
large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. 
Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by ex- 
tracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles per- 
colate; others softening marble for pillows and pin-cushions; 
others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them 
from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy 
upon two great designs ; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein 
he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he de- 
monstrated by several experiments which I was not skillful 
enough to comprehend. The other was, by a certain composi- 
tion of gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly applied, to 
prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs; and he 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 103 

hoped, in a reasonable time, to propagate the breed of naked 
sheep all over the kingdom. 

We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, 
as I have already said, the projectors in speculative learning 
resided. 

The first professor I saw was in a very large room, with forty 
pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look 
earnestly upon a frame which took up the greatest part of both 
the length and breadth of the room, he said perhaps I might 
wonder to see him employed in a project for improving specula- 
tive knowledge by practical and mechanical operations; but the 
world would soon be sensible of its usefulness, and he flattered 
himself that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in any 
other man's head. Every one knew how laborious the usual 
method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his con- 
trivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and 
with a little bodily labor, may write books in philosophy, 
poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology, without the 
least assistance from genius or study. He then led me to the 
frame, about the sides whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It 
was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The 
superficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the big- 
ness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked 
together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered on 
every square with paper pasted on them; and on these papers 
were written all the words of their language, in their several 
moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order. The 
professor then desired me to observe, for he was going to set his 
engine at work. The pupils, at his command, took each of them 
hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the 
edges of the frame; and, giving them a sudden turn, the whole 
disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then com- 
manded six-and- thirty of the lads to read the several lines softly, 
as they appeared upon the frame; and, where they found three 
or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they 
dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This 
work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn the 
engine was so contrived that the words shifted into new places, 
as the square bits of wood moved upside down. 
Six hours a day the young students were employed in this 



I04 JONATHAN SWIFT 

labor, and the professor showed me several volumes in large 
foho, already collected, of broken sentences which he intended 
to piece together, and, out of those rich materials, to give the 
world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, 
might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public 
would raise a fund for making and employing live hundred such 
frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in 
common their several collections. 

He assured me that this invention had employed all his 
thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocab- 
ulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the 
general proportion there is in books between the numbers of 
particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech. 

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious per- 
son for his great communicativeness; and promised, if ever I 
had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I 
would do him justice, as the sole inventor of this wonderful ma- 
chine; the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to de- 
lineate upon paper, as in the figure here annexed. I told him, 
although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal 
inventions from each other, — who had thereby at least this 
advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right 
owner, — yet I would take such caution, that he should have 
the honor entire, without a rival. 

We next went to the school of languages, where three pro- 
fessors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own 
country. 

The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting poly- 
syllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles; be- 
'tause, in reality, all things imaginable are but nouns. 

The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all 
words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in 
point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain that every 
word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by 
corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of 
our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, that, since words 
are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all 
men to carry about them such things as were necessary to ex- 
press the particular business they are to discourse on. And this 
invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 105 

well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with 
the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion, 
unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their 
tongues after the manner of their forefathers; such constant 
irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. How- 
ever, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new 
scheme of expressing themselves by things; which hath only 
this inconvenience attending it, that, if a man's business be very 
great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to 
carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can af- 
ford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often be- 
held two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their 
packs, Hke peddlers among us, who, when they met in the 
streets, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold 
conversation for an hour together, — then put up their imple- 
ments, help each other resume their burdens, and take their 
leave. 

But for short conversations a man may carry implements in 
his pockets, and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in 
his house he cannot be at a loss. Therefore the room where com- 
pany meet, who practice this art, is full of all things ready at 
hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial con- 
verse. 

Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, 
that it would serve as an universal language, to be understood 
in all civilized nations, whose goods and utensils are generally 
of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might 
easily be comprehended. And thus ambassadors would be 
qualified to treat with foreign princes, or ministers of state, to 
whose tongues they were utter strangers. 

I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught 
his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. 
The proposition and demonstration were fairly written on a 
thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This the 
student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three 
days following eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer 
digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposi- 
tion along with it. But the success had not hitherto been an- 
swerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, 
and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is 



io6 JONATHAN SWIFT 

so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it 
upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet 
persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the prescription re- 
quires. . . . 

[the houyhnhnms] 

The reader may please to observe that the following extract 
of many conversations I had with my master, contains a sum- 
mary of the most material points which were discoursed at sev- 
eral times, for above two years, his Honor often desiring fuller 
satisfaction, as I farther improved in the Houyhnhnm tongue. 
I laid before him, as well as I could, the whole state of Europe; 
I discoursed of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences; 
and the answers I gave to all the questions he made, as they 
arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation not to 
be exhausted. But I shall here only set down the substance of 
what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing 
it into order as well as I can, without any regard to time, or 
other circumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. My only 
concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my mas- 
ter's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by 
my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our bar- 
barous English. 

In obedience, therefore, to his Honor's commands, I related 
to him the revolution under the Prince of Orange ; the long war 
with France entered into by the said Prince, and renewed by 
his successor the present Queen, wherein the greatest powers 
of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued; I com- 
puted, at his request, that about a million of Yahoos might have 
been killed in the whole progress of it, and perhaps a hundred 
or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk. 

He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that 
made one country go to war with another. I answered they 
were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. 
Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have 
land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of 
ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or 
divert the clamor of the subjects against their evil administra- 
tion. Difference in opinion hath cost many millions of lives: 
for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 107 

the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling 
be a vice or virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw 
it into the fire; what is the best color for a coat, — whether 
black, white, red, or gray ; and whether it should be long or short, 
narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are 
any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as 
those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in 
things indifferent. 

Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which 
of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither 
of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrel- 
eth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. 
Sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is too 
strong; and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our 
neighbors want the things which we have, or have the things 
which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours, or give us 
theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country, 
after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pes- 
tilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justi- 
fiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of 
his towns hes convenient for us, or a territory of land, that 
would render our dominions round and complete. If a prince 
sends forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignor- 
ant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves 
of the rest, in order to civiHze and reduce them from their bar- 
barous way of living. It is a very kingly, honorable, and fre- 
quent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another 
to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he 
hath driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions him- 
self, and kill, imprison, or banish the prince he came to relieve. 
Alliance by blood or marriage is a frequent cause of war between 
princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their dis- 
position to quarrel. Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations 
are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For 
these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honorable 
of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold 
blood as many of his own species, who had never offended him, 
as possibly he can. 

There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not 
able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to 



io8 JONATHAN SWIFT 

richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they 
keep three-fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their 
maintenance; such are those in Germany and other northern 
parts of Europe. 

" What you have told me," said my master, "upon the sub- 
ject of war, does, indeed, discover most admirably the effects 
of that reason you pretend to; however, it is happy that the 
shame is greater than the danger, and that Nature hath left 
you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For, your 
mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each 
other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then, as to the claws 
upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, 
that one of our Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before 
him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who 
have been killed in battle, I cannot but think that you have 
said the thing which is not." 

I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at 
his ignorance. And, being no stranger to the art of war, I gave 
him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carbines, pis- 
tols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, 
attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea-fights; 
ships sunk with a thousand men; twenty thousand killed on 
each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air; smoke, noise, 
confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet; flight, pursuit, 
victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and 
wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, 
burning, and destroying. And, to set forth the valor of my 
own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them 
blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in 
a ship; and beheld the dead bodies come down in pieces from 
the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators. 

I was going on to more particulars when my master com- 
manded me silence. He said, whoever understood the nature of 
Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to 
be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and 
cunning equaled their malice. But as my discourse had in- 
creased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave 
him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stran- 
ger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable 
words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation. 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 109 

That, although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no 
more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did a 
gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cut- 
ting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could 
be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of 
that faculty might be worse than brutaUty itself. He seemed 
therefore confident that, instead of reason, we were only pos- 
sessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices, as 
the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of anill- 
shapen body, not only larger, but more distorted. 

He added that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, 
both in this and some former discourses. There was another 
point which a little perplexed him at present. I had informed 
him that some of our crew left their country on account of be- 
ing ruined by law; that I had already explained the meaning of 
the word, but he was at a loss how it should come to pass that 
the law, which was intended for every man's preservation, 
should be any man's ruin. Therefore he desired to be further 
satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, ac- 
cording to the present practice in my own country; because he 
thought Nature and reason were sufl&cient guides for a reason- 
able animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we 
ought to do and what to avoid. 

I assured his Honor that law was a science in which I had not 
much conversed, further than by employing advocates in vain, 
upon some injustices that had been done me; however, I would 
give him all the satisfaction I was able. 

I said, there was a society of men among us, bred up from 
their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the 
purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as 
they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are 
slaves. For example, if my neighbor hath a mind to my cow, he 
hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. 
I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against 
all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for 
himself. Now in this case I, who am the right owner, lie under 
two disadvantages; first, my lawyer, being practiced almost 
from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his ele- 
ment when he would be an advocate for justice, — which, as an 
office unnatural, he always attempts with great awkwardness, 



no JONATHAN SWIFT 

if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer 
must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded 
by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would 
lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two 
methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my ad- 
versary's lawyer with a double fee; who will then betray his 
client, by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The 
second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as un- 
just as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; 
and this, if it be skillfully done, will certainly bespeak the favor 
of the bench. Now, your Honor is to know that these judges 
are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, 
as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the 
most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and, hav- 
ing been biased all their Hves against truth and equity, are 
imder such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury, and 
oppression, that I have known several of them refuse a large 
bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the 
faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature or their 
office. 

It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever hath 
been done before may legally be done again; and therefore they 
take special care to record all the decisions formerly made 
against common justice and the general reason of mankind. 
These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authori- 
ties, to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges 
never fail of directing accordingly. 

In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits 
of the cause, but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon 
all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, 
in the case already mentioned, they never desire to know what 
claim or title my adversary hath to my cow, but whether the 
said cow were red or black, her horns long or short, — whether 
the field I graze her in be round or square, — whether she was 
milked at home or abroad, — what diseases she is subject to, and 
the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause 
from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come 
to an issue. 

It is hkewise to be observed that this society hath a pecu- 
liar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can un- 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS iii 

derstand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they 
take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly con- 
founded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and 
wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the 
field left me by my ancestors for six generations, belongs to me, 
or to a stranger three hundred miles off. . . . 

My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what mo- 
tives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and 
weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, 
merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither 
could he comprehend what I meant in saying they did it for 
hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the 
use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of 
the metals ; that, when a Yahoo had got a great store of this pre- 
cious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a 
mind to, — the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts 
of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice 
of the most beautiful females. Therefore, since money alone 
was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they 
could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they 
found themselves inclined, from their natural bent, either to 
profusion or avarice. That the rich man enjoyed the fruit of 
the poor man's labor, and the latter were a thousand to one in 
proportion to the former. That the bulk of our people were 
forced to Hve miserably, by laboring every day for small wages, 
to make a few Hve plentifully. I enlarged myself much on 
these and many other particulars, to the same purpose, but his 
Honor was still to seek ; for he went upon a supposition that all 
animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, 
and especially those who presided over the rest. Therefore he 
desired I would let him know what these costly meats were, 
and how any of us happened to want them. Whereupon I enu- 
merated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various 
methods of dressing them, which could not be done without 
sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for 
liquors to drink, as for sauces, and innumerable other conve- 
niences. I assured him that this whole globe of earth must be 
at least three times gone round, before one of our better female 
Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in. He said 
that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish 



112 JONATHAN SWIFT 

food for its own inhabitants. But what he chiefly wondered at, 
was how such vast tracts of ground as I described should be 
wholly without fresh water, and the people put to the necessity 
of sending over the sea for drink. I replied that England (the 
dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three 
times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are able 
to consume, as well as hquors extracted from grain, or pressed 
out of the fruit of certain trees, which made excellent drink; 
and the same proportion in every other convenience of life. But 
in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and 
the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of 
our necessary things to other countries, from whence, in return, 
we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend 
among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast num- 
bers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by 
begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flat- 
tering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, 
voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, 
libeling, free-thinking, and the like occupations ; every one of 
which terms I was at much pains to make him understand. 

That wine was not imported among us from foreign coun- 
tries, to supply the want of water, or other drinks, but because 
it was a sort of liquid which made us merry, by putting us out 
of our senses; diverted all melancholy thoughts, begat wild ex- 
travagant imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes, and ban- 
ished our fears; suspended every ofiice of reason for a time, and 
deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound 
sleep; although it must be confessed that we always awaked 
sick and dispirited, and that the use of this liquor filled us with 
diseases which made our lives uncomfortable and short. 

But, beside all this, the bulk of our people supported them- 
selves by furnishing the necessities or conveniences of life to 
the rich, and to each other. For instance, when I am at home, 
and dressed as I ought to be, I carry on my body the workman- 
ship of an hundred tradesmen; the building and furniture of 
my house employ as many more, and five times the number to 
adorn my wife. 

I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get 
their Hvelihood by attending the sick, having upon some occa- 
sions informed his Honor that many of my crew had died of 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 113 

diseases. But here it was with the utmost difficulty that I 
brought him to apprehend what I meant. He could easily con- 
ceive that a Houyhnhnm grew weak and heavy a few days be- 
fore his death; or, by some accident, might hurt a Hmb. But 
that Nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer 
any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and 
desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil. I told 
him, we fed on a thousand things, which operated contrary to 
each other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank 
without the provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights 
drinking strong liquors, without eating a bit, which disposed us 
to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented 
digestion. That it would be endless to give him a catalogue of 
all diseases incident to human bodies, for they could not be 
fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and 
joint; in short, every part, external and intestine, having dis- 
eases appropriated to each. To remedy which, there was a sort 
of people bred up among us, in the profession, or pretence, of 
curing the sick. And, because I had some skill in the faculty, 
I would, in gratitude to his Honor, let him know the whole 
mystery and method by which they proceed. 

Their fundamental idea is, that all diseases arise from reple- 
tion ; from whence they conclude that a great evacuation of the 
body is necessary. Their next business is, from herbs, miner- 
als, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, seaweed, excrements, barks 
of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men's flesh and 
bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition for smell 
and taste the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable they 
can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects 
with loathing; and this they call a vomit. Or else, from the 
same storehouse, with some other poisonous additions, they 
command us to take in a medicine equally annoying and dis- 
gustful to the bowels. . . . 

But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are 
only imaginary, for which the physicians have invented im- 
aginary cures; these have their several names, and so have the 
drugs that are proper for them; and with these our female 
Yahoos are always infested. . . . 



114 JONATHAN SWIFT 






-^^^^^ A MODEST PROPOSAL 



FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN OF POOR PEOPLE 



.1^,^ IN IRELAND FROM BEING A BURDEN TO 
THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY, AND 
FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL 
TO THE PUBLIC 

1729 

[This is the most famous of Swift's tracts on Irish aflfairs, occasioned by 
his long residence in Dublin and his concern for the suffering and wrongs 
of the Irish people; it is also the most terrible example of his caustic irony. 
Craik remarks: "He adopts the phraseology, the outward style, the man- 
nerisms of the humorist; but it is only to give intensity to the irony." 
And Prescott: "To overlook Swift's serious purpose is entirely to mis- 
understand the piece. Take the passage in which Swift proposes remedies, 
— the expedients rejected, in the ironical presentation, being of course the 
very ones which he wishes seriously to recommend."] 

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this 
great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, 
the roads, and cabin-doors, crowded with beggars of the female 
sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and 
importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, 
instead of being able to work for their honest Hvelihood, are 
forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for 
their helpless infants; who, as they grow up, either turn thieves 
for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight 
for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. 

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number 
of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their 
mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is, in the present 
deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional griev- 
ance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and 
easy method of making these children sound, useful members 
of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as 
to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. 

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide 
only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much 
greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants 
at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able 



A MODEST PROPOSAL ii5 ' "^ 

to support them, as those who demand our charity in the 
streets. 

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many 
years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the 
several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them 
grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true a child just 
born may be supported by its mother's milk for a solar year, 
with little other nourishment; at most, not above the value of 
two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value 
in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly 
at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a 
manner as, instead of being a charge upon their parents or the 
parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, 
they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly 
to the clothing, of many thousands. 

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, 
that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that hor- 
rid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, 
too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I 
doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would 
move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. 

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned 
one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about 
two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from 
which number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able 
to maintain their own children (although I apprehend there 
cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the king- 
dom) ; but this being granted, there will remain a hundred and 
seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, 
for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by acci- 
dent or disease within the year. There only remain a hundred 
and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. 
The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared and 
provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present 
situation of affairs is utterly impossible by all the methods 
hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handi- 
craft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the 
country) nor cultivate land; they can very seldom pick up a 
livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except 
where they are of towardly parts, — although I confess they 



V 



ii6 JONATHAN SWIFT 

learn the rudiments much earlier; during which time they can, 
however, be properly looked upon only as probationers; as I 
have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of 
Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or 
two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the king- 
dom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. 

I am assured by our merchants that a boy or a girl before 
twelve years old is no saleable commodity ; and even when they 
come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three 
pounds and half-a-crown at most, on the exchange; which can- 
not turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge 
of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that 
value. 

I shall now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts, 
which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. 

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my 
acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well 
nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and 
A wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; 
and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or 
a ragout. 

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that 
of the hundred and twenty thousand children already com- 
puted, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof 
only one-fourth part to be males ; which is more than we allow 
to sheep, black-cattle, or swine; and my reason is, that these 
children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not 
much regarded by our savages; therefore one male will be 
sufficient for four females. That the remaining hundred thou- 
sand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of 
quality and fortune through the kingdom ; always advising the 
mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to 
render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make 
two dishes at an entertainment for friends ; and when the fam- 
ily dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable 
dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very 
good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. 

I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will 
weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, 
will increase to twenty-eight pounds. / 



A MODEST PROPOSAL 



117 



I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very 
proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most 
of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. . . . 

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's 
child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four- 
fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags 
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten 
shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have 
said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when 
he has only some particular friend, or his own family, to dine 
with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, 
and grow popular among his tenants ; the mother will have eight 
shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another 
child. 

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times 
require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially 
dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer- 
boots for fine gentlemen. 

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this 
purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we 
may be assured will not be wanting ; although I rather recom- 
mend buying the children alive, then dressing them hot from 
the knife, as we do roasting pigs. 

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose 
virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on 
this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said 
that, many gentlemen of this kingdom having of late destroyed 
their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well 
supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceed- 
ing fourteen years of age, nor under twelve; so great a number 
of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for 
want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their 
parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But, 
with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a 
patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments ; for as to the 
males, my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent 
experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like 
that of our schoolboys, by continual exercise, and their taste 
disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. 
Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submis- 



ii8 JONATHAN SWIFT 

sion, be a loss to the public, because they soon would become 
breeders themselves. And besides, it is not improbable that 
some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a prac- 
tice (although indeed very unjustly) , as a little bordering upon 
cruelty ; which, I confess, has always been with me the strongest 
objection against any project, how well soever intended. 

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this 
expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, 
a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to Lon- 
don above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my 
friend that in his country, when any young person happened 
to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons 
of quality as a prime dainty ; and that in his time the body of a 
plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to 
poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime 
minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in 
joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither in- 
deed can I deny that, if the same use were made of several 
plump young girls in this town, who, without one single groat 
to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and ap- 
pear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they 
never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. 

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern 
about that vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, 
or maimed ; and I have been desired to employ my thoughts, 
what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an 
encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, 
because it is very well known that they are every day dying, 
and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast 
as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, 
they are now in almost as hopeful a condition ; they cannot get 
work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, 
to a degree that, if at any time they are accidentally hired to 
common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus 
the country and themselves are happily delivered from the 
evils to come. 

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my 
subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have 
made are obvious and.many, as well as of the highest import- 
ance. 



A MODEST PROPOSAL 119 

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen 
the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, 
being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most 
dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose to de- 
liver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their ad- 
vantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have 
chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay 
tithes against their conscience to an Episcopal curate. 

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable 
of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress, and 
help to pay their landlord's rent; their corn and cattle being 
already seized, and money a thing unknown. 

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand 
children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed 
at less than ten shillings apiece per annum, the nation's stock 
will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, 
beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all 
gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement 
in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the 
goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. 

Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight 
shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will 
be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year. 

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to tav- 
erns ; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to pro- 
cure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and, con- 
sequently, have their houses frequented by all the fine gentle- 
men, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in 
good eating; and a skillful cook, who understands how to oblige 
his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please. 

Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, 
which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards, or 
enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and 
tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were 
sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some 
sort by the public, to their annual profit or expense. We should 
see an honest emulation among the married women, which of 
them could bring the fattest child to the market. 

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, 
the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of 



I20 JONATHAN SWIFT 

barreled beef; the propagation of swine's flesh, and improve- 
ment in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among 
us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our table ; 
which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-" 
grown, fat, yearling child, which, roasted whole, will make a 
considerable figure at a lord mayor's feast, or any other public 
entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being stu- 
dious of brevity. 

Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be 
constant customers for infants' flesh, beside others who might 
have it at merry-meetings, particularly at weddings and chris- 
tenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about 
twenty thousand carcases ; and the rest of the kingdom (where 
probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining 
eighty thousand. 

I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised 
against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the num- 
ber of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. 
This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal design in 
offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe that I 
calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ire- 
land, and for no other that ever was, is, or I think ever can be. 
upon earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedi- 
ents : of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound ; of using 
neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is our 
own growth and manufacture; of utterly rejecting the materials 
and instruments that promote foreign luxury; of curing the 
expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our 
women; of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and 
temperance; of learning to love our country, in the want of 
which we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of 
Topinamboo; of quitting our animosities and factions, nor 
acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one an- 
other at the very moment their city was taken; of being a little 
cautious not to sell our country and conscience for nothing; of 
teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy toward 
their tenants; lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, 
and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a resolution could now 
be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately 
unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and 



A MODEST PROPOSAL i2i 

the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair 
proposal of just dealmg, though often and earnestly invited 
to it. 

Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the 
like expedients, till he has at least some glimpse of hope that 
there will be ever some hearty and sincere attempt to put them 
in practice. 

But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years 
with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length 
utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this pro- 
posal; which, as it is wholly new, so it has something solid and 
real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, 
and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. 
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh 
being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance 
in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would 
be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. 

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion 
as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be 
found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before 
something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to 
my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author, or 
authors, will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, 
as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and 
raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. 
And, secondly, there being a round million of creatures in 
human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsist- 
ence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two 
millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by 
profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with 
the wives and children who are beggars in effect, — I desire those 
politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so 
bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the 
parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day 
think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year 
old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such 
a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone 
through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of 
paying rent without money or trade, the want of common 
sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from 



122 JONATHAN SWIFT 

the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable pros- 
pect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed 
for ever. 

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the 
least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this neces- 
sary work, having no other motive than the public good of my 
country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, reliev- 
ing the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich, I have no 
children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the 
youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. 







RICHARD STEELE ^ ^ 

THE TATLER \ ^ 

[This periodical was founded by Steele, and issued three times a week 
for 271 numbers, from April, 1709, to January, 1711. Steele himself wrote 
about 188 of these. The papers were supposed to be written by one Isaac 
Bickerstaff, a pseudonym which had been used by Swift in certain pam- 
phlets in which he attacked, and predicted the death of, an astrologer 
named Partridge. (See the allusion to this practical joke in the extracts 
from the first number.)] 

No. I. Tuesday, April 12, 1709 

Quicquid agunl homines . . . nostri farrago libelli. — Juv., Sat. I, 85, 86. 

Though the other papers which are pubh'shed for the use of 
the good people of England have certainly very wholesome 
effects, and are laudable in their particular kinds, yet they do 
not seem to come up to the main design of such narrations, 
which, I humbly presume, should be principally intended for 
the use of politic persons, who are so public-spirited as to 
neglect their own affairs to look into transactions of state. 
Now these gentlemen, for the most part, being men of strong 
zeal and weak intellects, it is both a charitable and a necessary 
work to offer something whereby such worthy and well- 
affected members of the commonwealth may be instructed, 
after their reading, what to think; which shall be the end and 
purpose of this my paper; wherein I shall from time to time 
report and consider all matters of what kind soever that shall 
occur to me, and publish such my advices and reflections every 
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the week, for the con- 
venience of the post. I have also resolved to have something 
which may be of entertainment to the fair sex, in honor of 
whom I have taken the title of this paper. I therefore earn- 
estly desire all persons, without distinction, to take it in for 
the present gratis, and hereafter at the price of one penny, 
forbidding all hawkers to take more for it at their peril. And 
I desire my readers to consider that I am at a very great charge 
for proper materials for this work, as well as that, before I 



124 RICHARD STEELE 

resolved upon it, I had settled a correspondence in all parts of 
the known and knowing world. And forasmuch as this globe is 
not trodden upon by mere drudges of business only, but that 
men of spirit and genius are justly to be esteemed as consider- 
able agents in it, we shall not, upon a dearth of news, present 
you with musty foreign edicts, or dull proclamations, but shall 
divide our relation of the passages which occur in action or dis- 
course throughout this town, as well as elsewhere, under such 
dates of places as may prepare you for the matter you are to 
expect; in the following manner: 

All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall 
be under the article of White's Chocolate-house; poetry, un- 
der that of Will's Coffee-house; learning, under the title of 
Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from St. 
James's Coffee-house; and what else I shall on any other sub- 
ject offer, shall be dated from my own apartment. 

I once more desire my readers to consider that, as I cannot 
keep an ingenious man to go daily to Will's under twopence 
each day merely for his charges, to White's under sixpence, 
nor to the Grecian without allowing him some plain Spanish, 
to be as able as others at the learned table, and that a good 
observer cannot speak with even Kidney ^ at St. James's with- 
out clean linen, — I say, these considerations will, I hope, 
make all persons willing to comply with my humble request 
(when my gratis stock is exhausted) of a penny apiece; espe- 
cially since they are sure of some proper amusement, and that 
it is impossible for me to want means to entertain them, — 
having, besides the helps of my own parts, the power of divi- 
nation, and that I can, by casting a figure, tell you all that will 
happen before it comes to pass. But this last faculty I shall use 
very sparingly, and not speak of anything until it is passed, 
for fear of divulging matters which may offend our supe- 
riors. . . . 

From my own apartment. . 

I am sorry I am obliged to trouble the public with so much 
discourse upon a matter which I at the very first mentioned 
as a trifle, viz., the death of Mr. Partridge, under whose name 
there is an almanac come out for the year 1709, in one page of 
which it is asserted by the said John Partridge, that he is still 

, 1 A waiter. 



THE TATLER 125 

living, and that not only so, but that he was also living some 
time before, and even at the instant when I writ of his death. 
I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently 
convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I 
don't doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaint- 
ance; for though the legs and arms and whole body of that man 
may still appear and perform their animal functions, yet since, 
as I have elsewhere observed, his art is gone, the man is gone. 
I am, as I said, concerned that this little matter should make 
so much noise; but since I am engaged, I take myself obliged 
in honor to go on in my lucubrations, and by the help of these 
arts of which I am master, as well as my skill in astrological 
speculations, I shall, as I see occasion, proceed to confute other 
dead men, who pretend to be in being, that they are actually 
deceased. I therefore give all men fair warning to mend their 
manners, for I shall from time to time print bills of mortality; ^ 
and I beg the pardon of all such who shall be named therein, 
if they who are good for nothing shall find themselves in the 
number of the deceased. 

No. 25. June 7, 1709 

White's Chocolate-house. 
A letter from a young lady, written in the most passion- 
ate terms, wherein she laments the misfortune of a gentleman, 
her lover, who was lately wounded in a duel, has turned my 
thoughts to that subject, and inclined me to examine into the 
causes which precipitate men into so fatal a folly. And as it 
has been proposed to treat of subjects of gallantry in the arti- 
cle from hence, and no one point of nature is more proper to be 
considered by the company who frequent this place, than that 
of duels, it is worth our consideration to examine into this chi- 
merical groundless humor, and to lay every other thought aside 
till we have stripped it of all its false pretences to credit and 
reputation amongst men. But I must confess, when I consider 
what I am going about, and run over in my imagination all the 
endless crowd of men of honor who will be ofTended at such a 
discourse, I am undertaking, methinks, a work worthy an 
invulnerable hero in romance, rather than a private gentleman 
with a single rapier. But as I am pretty well acquainted by 

1 See note to page 45. 



126 RICHARD STEELE 

great opportunities with the nature of man, and know of a 
truth that all men fight against their will, the danger vanishes, 
and resolution rises upon this subject. For this reason I shall 
talk very freely on a custom which all men wish exploded, 
though no man has courage enough to resist it. But there is 
one unintelligible word which I fear will extremely perplex my 
dissertation, and I confess to you I find very hard to explain, 
which is the term ''satisfaction." An honest country gentle- 
man had the misfortune to fall into company with two or three 
modern men of honor, where he happened to be very ill-treated; 
and one of the company, being conscious of his offense, sends a 
note to him in the morning, and tells him he was ready to give 
him satisfaction. "This is fine doing," says the plain fellow. 
" Last night he sent me away cursedly out of humor, and this 
morning he fancies it would be a satisfaction to be run through 
the body." 

As the matter at present stands, it is not to do handsome 
actions denominates a man of honor; it is enough if he dares 
to defend lill ones. Thus you often see a common sharper in 
competition with a gentleman of the first rank, though all 
mankind is convinced that a fighting gamester is only a pick- 
pocket with the courage of a highwayman. One cannot with 
any patience reflect on the unaccountable jumble of persons 
and things in this town and nation, which occasions very 
frequently that a brave man falls by a hand below that of the 
common hangman, and yet his executioner escapes the clutches 
of the hangman for doing it. I shall therefore hereafter consider 
how the bravest men in other ages and nations have behaved 
themselves upon such incidents as we decide by combat, and 
show, from their practice, that this resentment neither has its 
foundation from true reason nor sohd fame, but is an impos- 
ture, made up of cowardice, falsehood, and want of understand- 
ing. For this work, a good history of quarrels would be very 
edifying to the public, and I apply myself to the town for par- 
ticulars and circumstances within their knowledge, which may 
serve to embellish the dissertation with proper cuts. Most of 
the quarrels I have ever known have proceeded from some 
valiant coxcomb's persisting in the wrong, to defend some pre- 
vailing folly, and preserve himself from the ingenuity of own- 
ing a mistake. 



THE TATLER 127 

By this means it is called ''giving a man satisfaction" to 
urge your offense against him with your sword ; which puts me 
in mind of Peter's order to the keeper, in the Tale of a Tub: 
" If you neglect to do all this, damn you and your generation 
for ever; and so we bid you heartily farewell." If the contra- 
diction in the very terms of one of our challenges were as well 
explained, and tjirned into plain English, would it not run 
after this manner? 

" Sir: Your extraordinary behavior last night, and the liberty 
you were pleased to take with me, makes me this morning give 
you this, to tell you, because you are an ill-bred puppy, I will 
meet you in Hyde Park an hour hence; and because you want 
both breeding and humanity, I desire you would come with a 
pistol in your hand, on horseback, and endeavor to shoot me 
through the head, to teach you more manners. If you fail of 
doing me this pleasure, I shall say you are a rascal on every 
post in town. And so, sir, if you will not injure me more, I shall 
never forgive what you have done already. Pray, sir, do not 
fail of getting everything ready, and you will infinitely oblige, 
Sir, 

Your most obedient, 

humble servant, &c." . . . 

No. 95. November 17, 1709 

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati; 
Casta piidiciliam servat domus. 

ViRG., Georg. ii, 523. 

From my own apartment. 

There are several persons who have many pleasures and 
entertainments in their possession which they do not enjoy. 
It is therefore a kind and good office to acquaint them with 
their own happiness, and turn their attention to such instances 
of their good fortune which they are apt to overlook. Persons 
in the married state often want such a monitor, and pine away 
their days by looking upon the same condition in anguish and 
murmur which carries with it, in the opinion of others, a com- 
plication of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its in- 
quietudes. 

I am led into this thought by a visit I made an old friend who 
was formerly my school-fellow. He came to town last week 



128 RICHARD STEELE 

with his family for the winter, and yesterday morning sent me 
word his wife expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, at home 
at that house, and every member of it knows me for their well- 
wisher. I cannot indeed express the pleasure it is, to be met by 
the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither; the 
boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is 
I that am knocking at the door; and that child which loses the 
race to me, runs back again to tell the father it is Mr. Bicker- 
staff. This day I was -led in by a pretty girl, that we all thought 
must have forgot me ; for the family has been out of town these 
two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with 
us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance. After 
which they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories 
they heard in the country about my marriage to one of my 
neighbor's daughters; upon which the gentleman my friend 
said: " Nay, if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old 
companions, I hope mine shall have the preference. There's 
Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow 
as the best of them. But I know him too well ; he is so enamored 
with the very memory of those who flourished in our youth, 
that he will not so much as look upon the modern beauties. I 
remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a day 
to refresh your countenance and dress, when Teraminta 
reigned in your heart. As we came up in the coach, I repeated 
to my wife some of your verses on her." 

With such reflections on little passages which happened long 
ago, we passed our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. 
After dinner his lady left the room, as did also the children. 
As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand. '' Well, my 
good friend," says he, "I am heartily glad to see thee; I was 
afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined 
with you to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of 
the house a little altered, since you followed her from the play- 
house, to find out who she was, for me?" I perceived a tear 
fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little. 
But to turn the discourse, said I, " She is not, indeed, quite the 
creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried 
from you, and told me she hoped, as I was a gentleman, I 
would be employed no more to trouble her who had never 
offended me, but would be so much the gentleman's friend as 



THE TATLER 



X29 



to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in. 
You may remember I thought her in earnest, and you were 
forced to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get 
acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be for- 
ever fifteen." 

"Fifteen?" replied my good friend. ''Ah! you little under- 
stand, you that have Hved a bachelor, how great, how exqui- 
site a pleasure there is in being really beloved ! It is impossible 
that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me such 
pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That 
fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watchinjg 
with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, 
which had like to have carried her off last winter. I tell you 
sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot with 
any sort of moderation think of her present state of health. 
But as to what you say of fifteen — she gives me every day 
pleasures beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her 
beauty when I was in the vigor of youth. Every moment of 
her life brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my 
inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my fortune. Her 
face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; 
there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the 
very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my 
welfare and interests. Thus at the same time, methinks, the 
love I conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened 
by my gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much 
above the idle passion commonly called by that name, as the 
loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of 
gentlemen. Oh! she is an inestimable jewel. In her examina- 
tion of her household affairs, she shows a certain fearfulness to 
find a fault, which makes her servants obey her like children; 
and the meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for an 
offense, not always to be seen in children in other families. 
I speak freely to you, my old friend; ever since her sickness, 
things that gave me the quickest joy before, turn now to a 
certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know 
the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they 
must do, should they lose their mother in their tender years. 
The pleasure I used to take in telling my boy stories of the 
battles, and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her 



130 RICHARD STEELE 

baby, and the gossiping of it, is turned into inward reflection 
and melancholy." 

He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good 
lady entered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her coun- 
tenance, told us she had been searching her closet for some- 
thing very good to treat such an old friend as I was. Her hus- 
band's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her 
countenance, and I saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The 
lady, observing something in our looks which showed we had 
been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband re- 
ceive her with great concern under a forced cheerfulness, im- 
mediately guessed at what we had been talking of; and, apply- 
ing herself to me, said, with a smile, "Mr. Bickerstaff, don't 
believe a word of what he tells you. I shall still live to have you 
for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes 
more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. 
You must know, he tells me that he finds London a much more 
healthy place than the country; for he sees several of his old 
acquaintance and school-fellows are here young fellows, with 
fair full-bottomed periwigs. I could scarce keep him this 
morning from going out open-breasted." 

My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agree- 
able humor, made her sit down with us. She did it with that 
easiness which is pecuhar to women of sense, and, to keep up 
the good humor she had brought in with her, turned her rail- 
lery upon me. "Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed 
me one night from the playhouse ; supposing you should carry 
me thither to-morrow night, and lead me into the front box." 

This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties 
who were mothers to the present, and shone in the boxes 
twenty years ago. I told her I was glad she had transferred so 
many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest 
daughter was within half a year of being a toast. We were 
pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the 
young lady, when on a sudden we were alarmed with the noise 
of a drum, and immediately entered my little godson, to give 
me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, 
would have put him out of the room ; but I would not part with 
him so. I found, upon conversation with him, though he was 
a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, 



THE TATLER 131 

and was a great master of all the learning on the other side 
eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in 
yEsop's fables; but he frankly declared to me his mind that he 
did not delight in that learning, because he did not believe 
they were true. For which reason I found he had very much 
turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives 
and adventures of Don Belianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, 
the Seven Champions, and other historians of that age. I could 
not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forward- 
ness of his son; and that these diversions might turn to some 
profit, I found the boy had made remarks which might be of 
service to him during the course of his whole life. He would 
tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault 
with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and 
loved St. George for being the champion of England; and by 
this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the no- 
tions of discretion, virtue, and honor. 

I was extolling his accomplishments, when the mother told 
me that the little girl who led me in this morning was in her 
way a better scholar than he. " Betty," says she, " deals chiefly 
in fairies and sprites; and sometimes, in a winter night, will 
terrify the maids with her accounts, till they are afraid to go 
up to bed." 

I sat with them till it was very late, sometimes in merry, 
sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, 
which gives the only true relish to all conversation, — a sense 
that every one of us liked each other. I went home considering 
the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor; 
and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern to reflect 
that, whenever I shall go off, I shall leave no traces behind me. 
In this pensive mood I returned to my family, — that is to say, 
to my maid, my dog, and my cat, who only can be the better 
or worse for what happens to me. 

No. 104. December 8, 1709 

. . . There were several of us making merry at a friend's 
house in a country village, when the sexton of the parish church 
entered the room in a sort of surprise, and told us that, as he 
was digging a grave in the chancel, a little blow of his pick-axe 
opened a decayed coffin, in which there were several written' 



132 RICHARD STEELE 

papers. Our curiosity was immediately raised, so that we went 
to the place where the sexton had been at work, and found a 
great concourse of people about the grave. Among the rest, 
there was an old woman who told us the person buried there 
was a lady whose name I do not think fit to mention, though 
there is nothing in the story but what tends very much, to her 
honor. This lady Hved several years an exemplary pattern of 
conjugal love, and, dying soon after her husband, who every 
way answered her character in virtue and affection, made it 
her death-bed request that all the letters which she had re- 
ceived from him, both before and after her marriage, should 
be buried in the cofiin with her. These I found upon examina- 
tion were the papers before us. Several of them had suffered 
so much by time, that I could only pick out a few words, as — 
*'Mysoul!" "Lilies!" "Roses!" "Dearest angel!" and the 
like. One of them, which was legible throughout, ran thus: 

Madam: If you would know the greatness of my love, consider that of 
your own beauty. That blooming countenance, that snowy bosom, that 
graceful person, return every moment to my imagination. The brightness 
of your eyes hath hindered me from closing mine, since I last saw you. You 
may still add to your beauties by a smile. A frown will make me the most 
wretched of men, as I am the most passionate of lovers.^ 

It filled the whole company with a deep melancholy, to com- 
pare the description of the letter with the person that occa- 
sioned it, who was now reduced to a few crumbHng bones and 
a little mouldering heap of earth. With much ado I deciphered 
another letter, which begun with " My dear, dear wife." This 
gave me a curiosity to see how the style of one written in mar- 
riage differed from one written in courtship. To my surprise, 
I found the fondness rather augmented than lessened, though 
the panegyric turned upon a different accomplishment. The 
words were as follow : — 

Before this short'absence from you, I did not know that I loved you so 
much as I really do; though at the same time I thought I loved you as much 
as possible. I am under great apprehensions lest you should have any un- 
easiness whilst I am defrauded of my share in it, and can't think of tasting 
any pleasures that you don't partake with me. Pray, my dear, be careful 
of your health, if for no other reason because you know I could not out- 
live you. It is natural in absence to make professions of an inviolable con- 

> These letters are said to have been genuine, and to have been written by Sir Thomas 
(or Sir John) Chicheley. 



THE TATLER 133 

stancy; but towards so much merit it is scarce a virtue, expecially when it 
is but a bare return to that of which you have given me such continued 
proofs ever since our first acquaintance. I am, &c. 

It happened that the daughter of these two excellent per- 
sons was by when I was reading this letter. At the sight of the 
coffin, in which was the body of her mother, near that of her 
father, she melted into a flood of tears. As I had heard a great 
character of her virtue, and observed in her this instance of 
filial piety, I could not resist my natural inclination of giving 
advice to young people, and therefore addressed myself to her. 
" Young lady," said I, " you see how short is the possession of 
that beauty in which Nature has been so liberal to you. You 
find the melancholy sight before you is a contradiction to the 
first letter that you heard on that subject; whereas you may 
observe the second letter, which celebrates your mother's con- 
stancy, is itself, being found in this place, an argument of it. 
But, Madam, I ought to caution you not to think the bodies 
that lie before you, your father and your mother. Know their 
constancy is rewarded by a nobler union than by this mingling 
of their ashes, in a state where there is no danger or possibility 
of a second separation." 

No. 181. June 6, 1710. 

. . . The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the 
death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of 
age, but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than 
possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing 
to play with me. I remember I went into the room where his 
body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my 
battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling 
" Papa " ; for I know not how I had some slight idea that he was 
locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and, 
transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was 
before in, she almost smothered me in her embrace, and told 
me, in a flood of tears, papa could not hear me, and would play 
with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, 
whence he could never come to us again. She was a very 
beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in 
her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, me- 
thought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow which, before I 



134 RICHARD STEELE 

was sensible of what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and 
has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind 
in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo, and receives 
impressions so forcible that they are as hard to be removed by 
reason, as any mark with which a child is born is to be taken 
away by any future application. Hence it is that good-nature 
in me is no merit, but, having been so frequently overwhelmed 
with her tears before I knew the cause of any affliction, or 
could draw defenses from my own judgment, I imbibed con- 
sideration, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which 
has since ensnared me into ten thousand calamities, and from 
whence I can reap no advantage, except it be that in such a 
humor as I am now in, I can the better indulge myself in the 
softnesses of humanity, and enjoy that sweet anxiety which 
arises from the memory of past afflictions. 

We that are very old are better able to remember things 
which befell us in our distant youth, than the passages of later 
days. For this reason it is that the companions of my strong 
and vigorous years present themselves more immediately to 
me in this office of sorrow. Untimely or unhappy deaths are 
what we are most apt to lament, so little are we able to make it 
indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it must 
happen. Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are 
relieved from it. Every object that returns to our imagination 
raises different passions according to the circumstance of their 
departure. Who can have lived in an army, and in a serious 
hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men that might 
long have flourished in the arts of peace, and not join with the 
imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the tyrant to 
whose ambition they fefl sacrifices? But gallant men who are 
cut off by the sword move rather our veneration than our pity, 
and we gather relief enough from their own contempt of death, 
to m.ake it no evil, which was approached with so much cheer- 
fulness and attended with so much honor. But when we turn 
our thoughts from the great parts of life on such occasions, 
and, instead of lamenting those who stood ready to give death 
to those from whom they had the fortune to receive it, — I 
say, when we let our thoughts wander from such noble objects, 
and consider the havoc which is made among the tender and 
the innocent, pity enters with an unmixed softness, and pos- 
sesses our souls at once. 



THE TATLER 135 

Here, were there words to express such sentiments with 
proper tenderness, I should record the beauty, innocence, and 
untimely death of the first object my eyes ever beheld with 
love. The beauteous virgin ! How ignorantly did she charm, 
how carelessly excel! O Death! thou hast right to the bold, to 
the ambitious, to the high, and to the haughty; but why this 
cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the 
thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the 
dear image from my imagination. In the same week I saw her 
dressed for a ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of 
Death become the pretty trifler! I still behold the smiling 
earth — 

A large train of disasters were coming on to my memory, 
when my servant knocked at my closet door, and interrupted 
me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the same 
sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at 
Garraway's Coffee-house.^ Upon the receipt of it, I sent for 
three of my friends. We are so intimate that we can be com- 
pany in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain 
each other without expecting always to rejoice. The wine we 
found to be generous and warming, but with such a heat as 
moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived 
the spirits without firing the blood. We commended it till two 
of the clock this morning, and, having to-day met a little before 
dinner, we found that, though we drank two bottles a man, we 
had much more reason to recollect than forget what had passed 
the night before. 

No. 217. Tuesday, August 29, 17 10 

Atque deos alque asira vocat crudelia mater. — Virg. Eclog. v, 23. 

From my own apartment. 
As I was passing by a neighbor's house this morning, I over- 
heard the wife of the family speak things to her husband which 
gave me much disturbance, and put me in mind of a character 
which I wonder I have so long omitted, and that is an out- 
rageous species of the fair sex which^ is, distinguished by the 
term Scolds. The generality of women are by nature loqua- 

1 One regrets to note that this is an allusion to an advertisement, which appeared in the 
same number of the Taller, of the sale of "forty-six hogsheads and one half of extraordi- 
nary French claret." 



136 RICHARD STEELE 

cious ; therefore mere volubility of speech is not to be imputed 
to them, but should be considered with pleasure when it is used 
to express such passions as tend to sweeten or adorn conversa- 
tion. But when, through rage, females are vehement in their 
eloquence, nothing in the world has so ill an effect upon the 
features; for by the force of it I have seen the most amiable 
become the most deformed, and she that appeared one of the 
Graces immediately turned into one of the Furies. I humbly 
conceive the great cause of this evil may proceed from a false 
notion the ladies have of what we call a modest woman. They 
have too narrow a conception of this lovely character, and 
believe they have not at all forfeited their pretensions to it, 
provided they have no imputations on their chastity. But 
alas! the young fellows know they pick out better women in 
the side-boxes than many of those who pass upon the world 
and themselves for modest. 

Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts; when it is 
ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes. The neighbor 
I mention is one of your common modest women ; that is to say, 
those as are ordinarily reckoned such. Her husband knows 
every pain in life with her but jealousy. Now because she is 
clear in this particular, the man can't say his soul is his own, 
but she cries, "No modest woman is respected nowadays." 
What adds to the comedy in this case is that it is very ordinary 
with this sort of women to talk in the language of distress. 
They will complain of the forlorn wretchedness of their condi- 
tion, and then the poor helpless creatures shall throw the next 
thing they can lay their hands on at the person who offends 
them. Our neighbor was only saying to his wife she went a 
little too fine, when she immediately pulled his periwig ofif, 
and, stamping it under her feet, wrung her hands and said, 
"Never modest woman was so used." These ladies of irresisti- 
ble modesty are those who make virtue unamiable; not that 
they can be said to be virtuous, but as they live without scan- 
dal; and, being under the common denomination of being such, 
men fear to meet their faults in those who are as agreeable as 
they are innocent. 

I take the bully among men, and the scold among women, 
to draw the foundation of their actions from the same defect 
in the mind. A bully thinks honor consists wholly in being 



THE TATLER 137 

brave, and therefore has regard to no one rule of hfe, if he 
preserves himself from the accusation of cowardice. The fro- 
ward woman knows chastity to be the first merit in a woman, 
and therefore, since no one can call her one ugly name, she . 
calls all mankind all the rest. 

These ladies, where their companions are so imprudent as to 
take their speeches for any other than exercises of their own 
lungs, and their husbands' patience, gain by the force of being 
resisted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be op- 
posed but by being neglected ; though at the same time human 
frailty makes it very hard to relish the philosophy of contemn- 
ing even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty instance 
of this infirmity in the man of the best sense that ever was, — 
no less a person than Adam himself. According to Milton's 
description of the first couple, as soon as they had fallen, and 
the turbulent passions of anger, hatred, and jealousy first 
entered their breasts, Adam grew moody, and talked to his 
wife as you may find it in the 359th page and ninth book of 
Paradise Lost, in the octavo edition; which, out of heroics, and 
put into domestic style, would run thus : — 

"Madam, if my advice had been of any authority with you 
when that strange desire of gadding possessed you this morn- 
ing, we had still been happy. But your cursed vanity, and 
opinion of your own conduct, which is certainly very wavering 
when it seeks occasions of being proved, has ruined both your- 
self and me who trusted you." 

Eve had no fan in her hand to ruffle, or tucker to pull down ; 
but with a reproachful air she answered: "Sir, do you impute 
that to my desire of gadding, which might have happened to 
yourself with all your wisdom and gravity? The serpent spoke 
so excellently, and with so good a grace, that — Besides, what 
harm had I ever done him, that he should design me any? Was 
I to have been always at your side, I might as well have con- 
tinued there, and been but your rib still; but if I was so weak 
a creature as you thought me, why did you not interpose your 
sage authority more absolutely? You denied me going as 
faintly as you say I resisted the serpent. Had not you been 
too easy, neither you nor I had now transgressed." 

Adam replied: "Why, Eve, hast thou the impudence to up- 
braid me as the cause of thy transgression, for my indulgence 



138 RICHARD STEELE 

to thee? Thus it will ever be with him who trusts too much to 
a woman. At the same time that she refuses to be governed, if 
she suffers by her obstinacy she will accuse the man that shall 
leave her to herself." 

Thus they in mutual accusation spent 

The fruitless hours, but neither self -condemning; 

And of their vain contest appeared no end. 

This to the modern will appear but a very faint piece of con- 
jugal enmity; but you are to consider that they were but just 
begun to be angry, and they wanted new words for express- 
ing their new passions. The passionate and famihar terms 
with which the same case, repeated daily for so many thousand 
years, has furnished the present generation, were not then in 
use; but the foundation of debate has ever been the same, a 
contention about their merit and wisdom. Our general mother 
was a beauty, and hearing that there was another now in the 
world, could not forbear (as Adam tells her) showing herself, 
though to the devil, by whom the same vanity made her liable 
to be betrayed. 

I cannot, with all the help of science and astrology, find any 
other remedy for this evil but what was the medicine in this 
first quarrel; which was, as appeared in the next book, that 
they were convinced^f their being^bi>thjweak,^but one weaker 
than the other. . . . 

ADVERTISEMENT 

The season now coming on in which the town will begin to 
fill, Mr. Bickerstaff gives notice that, from the ist of October 
next, he will be much wittier than he has hitherto been. 

No. 263. Thursday, December 14, 1710 

Minima contentos node Britannos. — Juv., Sat. ii, i6i. 

From my own apartment. 
An old friend of mine being lately come to town, I went to 
see him on Tuesday last about eight o'clock in the evening, 
with a design to sit with him an hour or two and talk over old 
stories, but upon inquiring after him, his servant told me he 
was just gone to bed. The next morning, as soon as I was up 
and dressed, and had dispatched a little business, I came again 



THE TATLER 



139 



to my friend's house about eleven o'clock, with a design to 
renew my visit; but upon asking for him, his servant told me 
he was just sat down to dinner. In short, I found that my old- 
fashioned friend religiously adhered to the example of his fore- 
fathers, and observed the same hours that had been kept in 
the family ever since the Conquest. 

It is very plain that the night was much longer formerly in 
this island than it is at present. By the night I mean that por- 
tion of time which nature has thrown into darkness, and which 
the wisdom of mankind had formerly dedicated to rest and 
silence. This used to begin at eight o'clock in the evening, and 
conclude at six in the morning. The curfew, or eight o'clock 
bell, was the signal throughout the nation for putting out their 
candles and going to bed. 

Our grandmothers, though they were wont to sit up the last 
in the family, were all of them fast asleep at the same hours that 
their daughters are busy at crimp and basset. Modern states- 
men are concerting schemes, and engaged in the depth of poli- 
tics, at the time when their forefathers were laid down quietly 
to rest, and had nothing in their heads but dreams. As we 
have thus thrown business and pleasure into the hours of rest, 
and by that means made the natural night but half as long as 
it should be, we are forced to piece it out with a great part of the 
morning; so that near two- thirds of the nation lie fast asleep 
for several hours in broad daylight. This irregularity is grown 
so very fashionable at present, that there is scarce a lady of 
quality in Great Britain that ever saw the sun rise. And if 
the humor increases in proportion to what it has done of late 
years, it is not impossible but our children may hear the bell- 
man going about the streets at nine o'clock in the morning, and 
the watch making their rounds till eleven. 

This unaccountable disposition in mankind to continue 
awake in the night, and sleep in sunshine, has made me inquire 
whether the same change of inclination has happened to any 
other animals. For this reason I desired a friend of mine in the 
country to let me know whether the lark rises as early as he 
did formerly, and whether the cock begins to crow at his usual 
hour. My friend has answered me that his poultry are as regu- 
lar as ever, and that all the birds and the beasts of his neigh- 
borhood keep the same hours that they have observed in the 



/ 



140 RICHARD STEELE 

memory of man, and the same which, in all probability, they 
have kept for these five thousand years. 

If you would see the innovations that have been made among 
us in this particular, you may only look into the hours of col- 
leges, where they still dine at eleven and sup at six, which were 
doubtless the hours of the whole nation at the time when those 
places were founded. But at present the courts of justice are 
scarce opened in Westminster Hall at the time when William 
Rufus used to go to dinner in it. All business is driven for- 
ward : the landmarks of our fathers (if I may so call them) are 
removed, and planted further up into the day; insomuch that 
I am afraid our clergy will be obliged, if they expect full con- 
gregations, not to look any more upon ten o'clock in the morn- 
ing as a canonical hour. In my own memory the dinner has 
crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to three, and where it will 
fix nobody knows. I have sometimes thought to draw up a 
memorial in the behalf of supper against dinner, setting forth 
that the said dinner has made several encroachments upon the 
said supper, and entered very far upon his frontiers; that he 
has banished him out of several families, and in all has driven 
him from his headquarters, and forced him to make his retreat 
into the hours of midnight; and, in short, that he is now in 
danger of being entirely confounded and lost in a breakfast. . . . 

For my own part, I value an hour in the morning as much as 
common libertines do an hour at midnight. When I find my- 
self awakened into being, and perceive my life renewed within 
me, and at the same time see the whole face of nature recovered 
out of the dark uncomfortable state in which it lay for several 
hours, my heart overflows with such secret sentiments of joy 
and gratitude as are a kind of implicit praise to the great 
Author of Nature.' The mind in these early seasons of the day 
is so refreshed in all its faculties, and borne up with such new 
supplies of animal spirits, that she finds herself in a state of 
youth, especially when she is entertained with the breath of 
flowers, the melody of birds, the dews that hang upon the 
plants, and all those other sweets of nature that are peculiar 
to the morning. It is impossible for a man to have this relish 
of being, this exquisite taste of life, who does not come into 
the world before it is in all its noise and hurry; who loses the 
rising of the sun, the still hours of the day, and immediately 



THE SPECTATOR 141 

upon his first getting up plunges himself into the ordinary 
cares or folHes of the world. 

I shall conclude this paper with Milton's inimitable descrip- 
tion of Adam's awakening his Eve in Paradise, which indeed 
would have been a place as httle deUghtful as a barren heath or 
desert, to those who slept in it. . . . 



THE SPECTATOR 

[This periodical was founded jointly by Steele and Addison, and was 
issued six times a week, from March, 1 711, to December, 1712, amounting 
to 555 numbers; of these Steele wrote some 236. In 171 2 the papers were 
selling at some 10,000 per week, and in bound volumes they had no 
less success. The supposed author of this periodical was the gentleman 
called "the Spectator," whose character was sketched by Addison in 
the first number, and further described by Steele in the fourth, here 
reproduced.] 

No. 4. Monday, March 5, 17 11 

Egregii mortalem altique silentii. — HoK. 

An author, when he first appears in the world, is very apt to 
beUeve it has nothing to think of but his performances. With 
a good share of this vanity in my heart, I made it my business 
these three days to listen after my own fame; and as I have 
sometimes met with circumstances which did not displease 
me, I have been encountered by others which gave me much 
mortification. It is incredible to think how empty I have in 
this time observed some part of the species to be, — what mere 
blanks they are when they first come abroad in the morning, — 
how utterly they are at a stand until they are set a-going by 
some paragraph in a newspaper. Such persons are very accept- 
able to a young author, for they desire no more in anything 
but to be new, to be agreeable. If I found consolation among 
such, I was as much disquieted by the incapacity of others. 
These are mortals who have a certain curiosity without power 
of reflection, and perused my papers like spectators rather than 
readers. But there is so little pleasure in inquiries that so 
nearly concern ourselves (it being the worst way in the world 
to fame, to be too anxious about it), that upon the whole I 
resolved for the future to go on in my ordinary way, and, with- 
out too much fear or hope about the business of reputation, to 



\ 



142 RICHARD STEELE 

be very careful of the design of my actions, but very negligent 
of the consequences of them. 

It is an endless and frivolous pursuit to act by any other rule 
than the care of satisfying our own minds in what we do. One 
would think a silent man, who concerned himself with no one 
breathing, should be very little liable to misrepresentations; 
and yet I remember I was once taken up for a Jesuit, for no 
other reason but my profound taciturnity. It is from this mis- 
fortune that, to be out of harm's way, I have ever since affected 
crowds. He who comes into assembUes only to gratify his 
curiosity, and not to make a figure, enjoys the pleasures of 
retirement in a more exquisite degree than he possibly could 
in his closet; the lover, the ambitious, and the miser, are fol- 
lowed thither by a worse crowd than any they can withdraw 
from. To be exempt from the passions with which others are 
tormented, is the only pleasing solitude. I can very justly say 
with the sage, "I am never less alone than when alone." 

As I am insignificant to the company in public places, and 
as it is visible I do not come thither as most do, to show my- 
self, I gratify the vanity of all who pretend to make an appear- 
ance, and have often as kind looks from well-dressed gentlemen 
and ladies as a poet would bestow upon one of his audience. 
There are so many gratifications attend this public sort of 
obscurity, that some little distastes I daily receive have lost 
their anguish; and I did, the other day, without the least dis- 
pleasure, overhear one say of me, "That strange fellow"; and 
another answer, "I have known the fellow's face these twelve 
years, and so must you; but I believe you are the first ever 
asked who he was." There are, I must confess, many to whom 
my person is as well known as that of their nearest relations, 
who give themselves no farther trouble about calling me by my 
name or quality, but speak of me very currently by the appel- 
lation of Mr. What-d'ye-call-him. 

To make up for these trivial disadvantages, I have the high- 
est satisfaction of beholding all nature with an unprejudiced 
eye, and, having nothing to do with men's passions or inter- 
ests, I can, with the greater sagacity, consider their talents, 
manners, failings, and merits. It is remarkable that those who 
want any one sense, possess the others with greater force and 
vivacity. Thus my want of, or rather resignation of, speech 



THE SPECTATOR 143 

gives me the advantages of a dumb man. I have, methinks, 
a more than ordinary penetration in seeing, and flatter myself 
that I have looked into the highest and lowest of mankind, 
and made shrewd guesses, without being admitted to their 
conversation, at the inmost thoughts and reflections of all 
whom I behold. It is from hence that good or ill fortune has no 
manner of force towards affecting my judgment. I see men 
flourishing in courts, and languishing in jails, without being 
prejudiced from their circumstances to their favor or disad- 
vantage; but, from their inward manner of bearing their con- 
dition, often pity the prosperous and admire the unhappy. 

Those who converse with the dumb know from the turn of 
their eyes, and the changes of their countenance, their senti- 
ments of the objects before them. I have indulged my silence 
to such an extravagance, that the few who are intimate with 
me answer my smiles with concurrent sentences, and argue to 
the very point I shaked my head at, without my speaking. 
Will Honeycomb was very entertaining the other night at a 
play, to a gentleman who sat on his right hand, while I was at 
his left. The gentleman believed Will was talking to himself, 
when, upon my looking with great approbation at a young 
thing in a box before us, he said, "I am quite of another opin- 
ion. She has, I will allow, a very pleasing aspect, but methinks 
that simplicity in her countenance is rather childish than inno- 
cent." When I observed her a second time, he said, "I grant 
her dress is very becoming, but perhaps the merit of that 
choice is owing to her mother; for though," continued he, "I 
allow a beauty to be as much to be commended for the ele- 
gance of her dress as a wit for that of his language, yet if she 
has stolen the color of her ribands from another, or had advice 
about her trimmings, I shall not allow her the praise of dress 
any more than I would call a plagiary an author." 

When I threw my eye towards the next woman to her, Will 
spoke what I looked, according to his romantic imagination, in 
the following manner: "Behold, you who dare, that charming 
virgin ! behold the beauty of her person chastised by the inno- 
cence of her thoughts. Chastity, good-nature, and affability 
are the graces that play in her countenance; she knows she is 
handsome, but she knows she is good. Conscious beauty 
adorned with conscious virtue ! What a spirit is there in those 



144 RICHARD STEELE 

eyes ! What a bloom in that person ! How is the whole woman 
expressed in her appearance ! Her air has the beauty of motion, 
and her look the force of language." 

It was prudence to turn away my eyes from this object, and 
therefore I turned them to the thoughtless creatures who make 

yup the lump of that sex, and move a knowing eye no more than 
the portraiture of insignificant people by ordinary painters, 
which are but pictures of pictures. 
\ Thus the working of my own mind is the general entertain- 

.■^^^^r^ ment of my life; I never enter into the commerce of discourse 
with any but my particular friends, and not in pubhc even with 
them. Such a habit has perhaps raised in me uncommon re- 
flections, but this effect I cannot communicate but by my 
writingOAs my pleasures are almost wholly confined to those 
of the sight, I take it for a peculiar happiness that I have always 
had an easy and familiar admittance to the fair sex. If I never 
praised or flattered, I never belied or contradicted them. As 
these compose half the world, and are, by the just complais- 
ance and gallantry of our nation, the more powerful part of 
our people, I shall dedicate a considerable share of these my 
speculations to their service, and shall lead the young through 
all the becoming duties of virginityj marriagejjLjnd^widowho 
When it is a woman's day, in my works, I shall endeavor at a 
style and air suitable to their understanding. When I say this, 
u^Vt^ '^Al must be understood to mean that I shall not lower but exalt 
"*- I the subjects I treat upon. Discourse for their entertainment 

/ is not to be debased, but refined. A man may appear learned 

/without talking sentences, as in his ordinary gesture he dis- 
covers he can dance, though he does not cut capers. In a word, 
I shall take it for the greatest glory of my work, if among 
reasonable women this paper may furnish tea-table talk. In 
order to it, I shall treat on matters which relate to females, as 
they are concerned to approach or fly from the other sex, or as 
they are tied to them by blood, interest, or affection. Upon 
this occasion I think it but reasonable to declare that, what- 
ever skill I may have in speculation, I shall never betray what 
the eyes of lovers say to each other in my presence. At the same 
time I shall not think myself obliged by this promise to conceal 
any false protestations which I observe made by glances in 
public assemblies, but endeavor to make both sexes appear in 



THE SPECTATOR 145 

their conduct what they are in their hearts. By this means, 
love, during the time of my speculations, shall be carried on 
with the same sincerity as any other affair of less consideration. 
As this is the greatest concern, men shall be from henceforth 
liable to the greatest reproach for misbehavior in it. False- 
hood in love shall hereafter bear a blacker aspect than infidehty 
in friendship or villainy in business. For this great and good 
end, all breaches against that noble passion, the cement of 
society, shall be severely examined. But this, and all other 
matters loosely hinted at now, and in my former papers, shall 
have their proper place in my following discourses. The present 
writing is only to admonish the world that they shall not find 
me an idle but a busy Spectator. 

No. 49. Thursday, April 26, 171 1 

Hominem pagina nostra sapit. — Mart. 

It is very natural for a man who is not turned for mirthful 
meetings of men, or assemblies of the fair sex, to dehght in that 
sort of conversation which we find in coffee-houses. Here a 
man of my temper is in his element; for if he cannot talk, he 
can still be more agreeable to his company, as well as pleased 
in himself, in being only a hearer. It is a secret known to but 
few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you 
fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should con- 
sider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you or 
that you should hear him. The latter is the more general desire, 
and I know very able flatterers that never speak a word in 
praise of the persons from whom they obtain daily favors, but 
still practice a skillful attention to whatever is uttered by those 
with whom they converse. We are very curious to observe the 
behavior of great men and their clients, but the same passions 
and interests move men in lower spheres; and I (that have 
nothing else to do but make observations) see in every parish, 
street, lane, and alley of this populous city, a little potentate 
that has his court and his flatterers, who lay snares for his 
affection and favor by the same arts that are practiced upon 
men in higher stations. 

In the place I most usually frequent, men differ rather in the 
time of day in which they make a figure, than in any real great- 



146 RICHARD STEELE 

ness above one another. I, who am at the coffee-house at six 
in the morning, know that my friend Beaver, the haberdasher, 
has a levee of more undissembled friends and admirers than 
most of the courtiers or generals of Great Britain. Every man 
about him has, perhaps, a newspaper in his hand, but none can 
pretend to guess what step will be taken in any one court of 
Europe, till Mr. Beaver has thrown down his pipe, and de- 
clares what measures the Alhes must enter into, upon this new 
posture of affairs. Our coffee-house is near one of the Inns of 
Court, and Beaver has the audience and admiration of his 
neighbors from six till within a quarter of eight, at which time 
he is interrupted by the students of the house, some of whom 
are ready dressed for Westminster at eight in a morning, with 
faces as busy as if they were retained in every cause there, and 
others come in their night-gowns to saunter away their time, 
as if they never designed to go thither. I do not know that I 
meet in any of my walks objects which move both my spleen 
and laughter so effectually, as those young fellows at the 
Grecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adja- 

/cent to the law, who rise early for no other purpose but to pub- 
Hsh their laziness. One would think these young virtuosos 
take a gay'^ap and slippers, with a scarf and parti-colored 
gown, to be the ensigns of dignity; for the vain things approach 
each other with an air which shows they regard one another for 
^- their vestments. I have observed that the superiority among 
^^ these proceeds from an opinion of gallantry and fashion. The 

gentleman in the strawberry sash, who presides so much over 
the rest, has, it seems, subscribed to every opera this last 
winter, and is supposed to receive favors from one of the 
actresses. 

When the day grows too busy for these gentlemen to enjoy 
any longer the pleasures of their dishabille with any manner of 
confidence, they give place to men who have business or good 
sense in their faces, and come to the coffee-house either to 
transact affairs or enjoy conversation. The persons to whose 
behavior and discourse I have most regard, are such as are be- 
tween these two sorts of men; such as have not spirits too 
active to be happy and well pleased in a private condition, 
nor complexions too warm to make them neglect the duties and 
relations of life. Of these sort of men consist the worthier part 



THE SPECTATOR 147 

of mankind; of these are all good fathers, generous brothers, 
sincere friends, and faithful subjects. Their entertainments 
are derived rather from reason than imagination, which is the 
causeTEatTEere is no impatience or instability in their speech 
or action. You see in their countenances they are at home, and 
in quiet possession of the present instant as it passes, without 
desiring to quicken it by gratifying any passion, or prosecuting 
any new design. These are the men formed for society, and 
those little communities which we express by the word neigh- 
borhood. 

The coffee-house is the place of rendezvous to all that live 
near it, who are thus turned to relish calm and ordinary life. 
Eubulus presides over the middle hours of the day, when this 
assembly of men meet together. He enjoys a great fortune 
handsomely, without launching into expense, and exerts many 
noble and useful qualities, without appearing in any public 
employment. His wisdom and knowledge are serviceable to all 
that think fit to make use of them, and he does the office of a 
counsel, a judge, an executor, and a friend, to all his acquaint- 
ance, not only without the profits which attend such offices, 
but also without the deference and homage which are usually 
paid to them. The giving of thanks is displeasing to him. The . ' 
greatest gratitude you can show him is to let him see that you ' 
are a better man for his services, and that you are as ready to 
oblige others as he is to oblige you. 

In the private exigencies of his friends, he lends at legal value 
considerable sums which he might highly increase by rolling 
in the public stocks. He does not consider in whose hands his 
money will improve most, but where it will do most good. ■= «-^-^^^ 

Eubulus has so great an authority in his little diurnal audi- 
ence, that when he shakes his head at any piece of public news, 
they all of them appear dejected, and on the contrary, go home 
to their dinners with a good stomach and cheerful aspect, when 
Eubulus seems to intimate that things go well. Nay, their 
\'eneration towards him is so great that when they are in other 
company they speak and act after him, are wise in his sen- 
tences, and are no sooner sat down at their own tables, but 
they hope or fear, rejoice or despond, as they saw him do at 
the coffee-house. In a word, every man is Eubulus as soon as 
his back is turned. 



<^ 



148 RICHARD STEELE 

Having here given an account of the several reigns that suc- 
ceed each other from daybreak till dinner-time, I shall men- 
tion the monarchs of the afternoon on another occasion, and 
shut up the whole series of them with the history of Tom the 
Tyrant, who, as the first minister of the coffee-house, takes the 
government upon him between the hours of eleven and twelve 
at night, and gives his orders in the most arbitrary manner to 
the servants below him, as to the disposition of liquors, coal, 
and cinders. 

No. 157. Thursday, August 30, 1711 

— Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum, 
Natura deus humana: morlalis in untim 
Quodque caput. — Hor. 

I am very much at a loss to express by any word that occurs 
to me in our language, that which is understood by indoles in 
Latin. The natural disposition to any particular art, science, 
profession, or trade, is very much to be consulted in the care of 
youth, and studied by men for their own conduct when they 
form to themselves any scheme of life. It is wonderfully hard, 
indeed, for a man to judge of his own capacity impartially. 
That may look great to me which may appear little to another, 
and I may be carried by fondness towards myself so far as to 
attempt things too high for my talents and accomplishments. 
But it is not, methinks, so very difficult a matter to make a 
judgment of the abilities of others, especially of those who are 
in their infancy. My commonplace book directs me on this 
occasion to mention the dawning of greatness in Alexander, 
who, being asked in his youth to contend for a prize in the 
Olympic games, answered he would if he had kings to run 
against him. Cassius, who was one of the conspirators against 
Caesar, gave as great a proof of his temper, when in his child- 
hood he struck a playfellow, the son of Sylla, for saying his 
father was master of the Roman people. Scipio is reported to 
have answered, when some flatterers at supper were asking him 
what the Romans should do for a general after his death," Take 
Marius." Marius was then a very boy, and had given no in- 
stances of his valor; but it was visible to Scipio, from the man- 
ners of the youth, that he had a soul for the attempt and exe- 
cution of great undertakings. 



THE SPECTATOR 149 

I n:ust confess I have very often with much sorrow bewailed 
the misfortune of the children of Great Britain, when I con- 
sider the ignorance and undiscerning of the generality of 
schoolmasters. The boasted liberty we talk of is but a mean 
reward for the long servitude, the many heart-aches and ter- 
rors, to which our childhood is exposed in going through a 
grammar-school. Many of these stupid tyrants exercise their 
cruelty without any manner of distinction of the capacities of 
children, or the intention of parents in their behalf. There are 
many excellent tempers which are worthy to be nourished and 
cultivated with all possible diligence and care, that were never 
designed to be acquainted with Aristotle, Tully, or Virgil; and 
there are as many who have great capacities for understanding 
every word those great persons have writ, and yet were not 
born to have any relish of their writings. For want of this com- 
mon and obvious discerning in those who have the care of 
youth, we have so many hundred unaccountable creatures 
every age whipped up into great scholars, that are forever near 
a right understanding, and will never arrive at it. These are 
the scandal of letters, and these are generally the men who are 
to teach others. The sense of shame and honor is enough to 
keep the world itself in order, without corporal punishment, — 
much more to train the minds of uncorrupted and innocent 
children. It happens, I doubt not, more than once in a year, 
that a lad is chastised for a blockhead, when it is good appre- 
hension that makes him incapable of knowing what his teacher 
means. A brisk imagination very often may suggest an error 
which a lad could not have fallen into if he had been as heavy in 
conjecturing as his master in explaining. But there is no mercy 
even towards a wrong interpretation of his meaning; the suffer- 
ings of the scholar's body are to rectify the mistakes of his mind. 

I am confident that no boy who will not be allured to letters 
without blows, will ever be brought to anything with them. 
A great or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such 
indignities, and it is a sad change to lose of its virtue for the 
improvement of its knowledge. No one who has gone through 
what they call a great school, but must remember to have seen 
children of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has afterward 
appeared in their manhood) — I say no man has passed through 
this way of education, but must have seen an ingenuous crea- 



I50 RICHARD STEELE 

ture, expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, 
and silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and kneel on its ten- 
der knees to an inexorable blockhead, to be forgiven the false 
quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. The child is pun- 
ished, and the next day he commits a like crime, and so a third, 
with the same consequence. I would fain ask any reasonable 
man whether this lad, in the simplicity of his native innocence, 
full of shame and capable of any impression from that grace of 
soul, was not fitter for any purpose in this life, than 'after that 
spark of virtue is extinguished in him, though he is able to 
write twenty verses in an evening? 

Seneca says, after his exalted way of talking, ''As the im- 
mortal gods never learnt any virtue, though they are endued 
with all that is good, so there are some men who have so 
natural a propensity to what they should follow, that they 
learn it almost as soon as they hear it." Plants and vegetables 
are cultivated into the production of finer fruits than they 
would yield without that care; and yet we cannot entertain 
hopes of producing a tender conscious spirit into acts of virtue, 
without the same methods as are used to cut timber, or give 
new shape to a piece of stone. It is wholly to this dreadful 
practice that we may attribute a certain hardness and ferocity 
which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them 
in all their behavior. To be bred like a gentleman, and pun- 
ished like a malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that 
illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters. 

The Spartan boy who suffered the fox, which he had stolen 
and hid under his coat, to eat into his bowels, I dare say had 
not half the wit or petulance which we learn at great schools 
among us; but the glorious sense of honor, or rather fear of 
shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all 
the learning in the world without it. 

It is, methinks, a very melancholy consideration that a little 
negligence can spoil us, but great industry is necessary to 
improve us. The most excellent natures are soon depreciated, 
but evil tempers are long before they are exalted into good 
habits. To help this by punishments is the same thing as kill- 
ing a man to cure him of a distemper; when he comes to suffer 
punishment in that one circumstance, he is brought below the 
existence of a rational creature, and is in the state of a brute 



THE SPECTATOR 151 

that moves only by the admonition of stripes. But since this 
custom of educating by the lash is suffered by the gentry of 
Great Britain, I would prevail only that honest heavy lads 
may be dismissed from slavery sooner than they are at present, 
and not whipped on to their fourteenth or fifteenth year, 
whether they expect any progress from them or not. Let the 
child's capacity be forthwith examined, and he sent to some 
mechanic way of life, without respect to his birth, if nature 
designed him for nothing higher; let him go before he has in- 
nocently suffered, and is debased into a dereliction of mind for 
being what it is no guilt to be — a plain man. I would not here 
be supposed to have said that our learned men of either robe, 
who have been whipped at school, are not still men of noble 
and liberal minds; but I am sure they would have been much 
more so than they are, had they never suffered that infamy. 

"No. 324. Wednesday, March 27, 171 2 

O curiKB in terris animcB, el cceleslium inanes ! — Pers. 

Mr. Spectator: The materials you have collected towards a 
general history of clubs, make so bright a part of your Specu- 
lations, that I think it is but a justice we all owe the learned 
world, to furnish you with such assistances as may promote 
that useful work. For this reason I could not forbear com- 
municating to you some imperfect informations of a set of men 
(if you will allow them a place in that species of being) who 
have lately erected themselves into a nocturnal fraternity, 
under the title of the Mohock Club,^ — a name borrowed, it 
seems, from a sort of cannibals in India, who subsist upon 
plundering and devouring all the nations about them. The 
president is styled Emperor of the Mohocks, and his arms are 
a Turkish crescent, which his imperial majesty bears at present 
in a very extraordinary manner engraved upon his forehead. 
Agreeable to their name, the avowed design of their institu- 
tion is mischief; and upon this foundation all their rules and 
orders are framed. An outrageous ambition of doing all pos- 
sible hurt to their fellow-creatures is the great cement of their 
assembly, and the only qualification required in the members. 
In order to exert this principle to its full strength and perfec- 

_ _ * An actual organization, often referred to by writers of the period. 



152 RICHARD STEELE 

tion, they take care to drink themselves to a pitch, — that is, 
beyond the possibility of attending to any motions of reason 
or humanity; then make a general sally, and attack all that 
are so unfortunate as to walk the streets through which they 
patrol. Some are knocked down, others stabbed, others cut 
and carbonadoed. To put the watch to a total rout, and mor- 
tify some of those inoffensive militia, is reckoned a coup d' eclat. 
The particular talents by which these misanthropes are dis- 
tinguished from one another, consist in the various kinds of 
barbarities which they execute upon their prisoners. Some are 
celebrated for a happy dexterity in tipping the lion upon them, 
which is performed by squeezing the nose flat to the face, and 
boring out the eyes with their fingers. Others are called the 
dancing-masters, and teach their scholars to cut capers, by 
running swords through their legs, — a new invention, whether 
originally French I cannot tell. ... In this manner they 
carry on a war against mankind. 

I must own, sir, these are only broken, incoherent memoirs 
of this wonderful society; but they are the best I have been yet 
able to procure, for, being but of late established, it is not ripe 
for a just history, — and, to be serious, the chief design of this 
trouble is to hinder it from ever being so. You have been 
pleased, out of a concern for the good of your countrymen, to 
act, under the character of Spectator, not only the part of a 
looker-on, but an overseer of their actions; and whenever such 
enormities as this infest the town, we immediately fly to you 
for redress. I have reason to believe that some thoughtless 
youngsters, out of a false notion of bravery, and an immoder- 
ate fondness to be distinguished for fellows of fire, are insensi- 
bly hurried into this senseless, scandalous project. Such will 
probably stand corrected by your reproofs, especially if you 
inform them that it is not courage for half a score fellows, mad 
with wine and lust, to set upon two or three soberer than 
themselves; and that the manners of Indian savages are not 
becoming accomphshments to an EngHsh fine gentleman. Such 
of them as have been bullies and scowerers of a long standing, 
and are grown veterans in this kind of service, are, I fear, too 
hardened to receive any impressions from your admonitions. 
But I beg you would recommend to their perusal your ninth 
Speculation. They may there be taught to take warning from 



THE SPECTATOR 



153 



the club of Duellists, and be put in mind that the common fate 
of those men of honor was to be hanged. I am, sir, 
Your most humble servant, 

Philanthropos. 

The following letter is of a quite contrary nature; but I add 
it here, that the reader may observe, at the same view, how 
amiable ignorance may be, when it is shown in its simplicities, 
and how detestable in barbarities. It is written by an honest 
countryman to his mistress, and came to the hands of a lady of 
good sense, wrapped about a thread-paper, who has long kept 
it by her as an image of artless love. 

To her I very much respect, Mrs. Margaret Clark. 

Lovely, and O that I could write loving Mrs. Margaret Clark, I pray you 
let affection excuse presumption. Having been so happy as to enjoy the 
sight of your sweet countenance and comely body, sometimes when I had 
occasion to buy treacle or Hquorish powder at the apothecary's shop, I am 
so enamored with you that I can no more keep close my flaming desire to 
become your servant. And I am the more bold now to write to your 
sweet self, because I am now my own man, and may match where I please; 
for my father is taken away, and now I am come to my living, which is 
ten yard land and a house; and there is never a yard land in our field but is 
as well worth ten pound a year as a thief's worth a halter, and all my 
brothers and sisters are provided for. Besides, I have good household 
stuff, though I say it, both brass and pewter, linens and woolens; and 
though my home be thatched, yet, if you and I match, it shall go hard but 
I will have one half of it slated. If you think well of this motion, I will 
wait upon you as soon as my new clothes is made, and hay-harvest is in. 
I could, though I say it, have good matches in our town; but my mother 
(God's peace be with her) charged me upon her death-bed to marry a gen- 
tlewoman, one who had been well trained up in sewing and cookery. I do 
not think but that, if you and I can agree to marry, and lay our means to- 
gether, I shall be made grand juryman ere two or three years come about, 
and that will be a great credit to us. If I could have got a messenger for 
sixpence, I would have sent one on purpose, and some trifle or other for a 
token of my love, but I hope there is nothing lost for that neither. So, 
hoping you will take this letter in good part, and answer it with what care 
and speed you can, I rest and remain, Yours, if my own 

Mr. Gabriel Bullock, 
Swepston, Leicestershire. now my father is dead. 

When the coal carts come, I shall send oftener, and may come in one of 
them myself.^ 

' In the original paper the last part of this letter (beginning "matches in our town") 
was missing, and Steele observed: "The rest is torn off; and posterity must be contented 
to know that Mrs. Margaret Clark was very pretty, but are left in the dark as to the name 
of her lover." In No. 328 he published the conclusion, from a copy sent him by a corre- 
spondent, who testified to its authenticity. 



154 RICHARD STEELE 



THE GUARDIAN 

[This periodical was issued by Steele from March to October, 17 13, 
appearing six times a week; Steele himself wrote some 82 of the papers. 
Unlike the Taller and the Spectator, the Guardian dealt in part with politi- 
cal subjects, and was concerned in controversy with the Tory Examiner. 
Swift attacked it in his famous The Importance of the Guardian Considered.] 

No. 34. Monday, April 20, 1713 

Mores mullorum vidit. Hor. 

It is a most vexatious thing to an old man, who endeavors 
to square his notions by reason, and to talk from reflection and 
experience, to fall in with a circle of young ladies at their after- 
noon tea-table. This happened very lately to be my fate. The 
conversation, for the first half-hour, was so very rambling that 
it is hard to say what was talked of, or who spoke least to the 
purpose. The various motions of the fan, the tossings of the 
head, intermixed with all the pretty kinds of laughter, made 
up the greatest part of the discourse. At last this modish way 
of shining and being witty settled into something like conver- 
sation, and the talk ran upon fine gentlemen. From the sev- 
eral characters that were given, and the exceptions that were 
made, as this or that gentleman happened to be named, I found 
that a lady is not difficult to be pleased, and that the town 
swarms with fine gentlemen. A nimble pair of heels, a smooth 
complexion, a full-bottom wig, a laced shirt, an embroidered 
suit, a pair of fringed gloves, a hat and feather, — any one or 
more of these and the like accomplishments ennobles a man, 
and raises him above the vulgar, in a female imagination. On 
the contrary, a modest, serious behavior, a plain dress, a 
thick pair of shoes, a leathern belt, a waistcoat not lined with 
silk, and such like imperfections, degrade a man, and are so 
many blots in his escutcheon. I could not forbear smiling at 
one of the prettiest and liveliest of this gay assembly, who 
excepted to the gentility of Sir WilHam Hearty, because he 
wore a frieze coat, and breakfasted upon toast and ale. I pre- 
tended to admire the fineness of her taste, and to strike in with 
her in ridiculing those awkward healthy gentlemen that seem 



THE GUARDIAN 155 

to make nourishment the chief end of eating. I gave her an 
account of an honest Yorkshire gentleman, who (when I was a 
traveler) used to invite his acquaintance at Paris to break their 
fast with him upon cold roast beef and mum. There was, I 
remember, a little French marquis, who was often pleased to 
rally him unmercifully upon beef and pudding, of which our 
countryman would despatch a pound or two with great alac- 
rity, while this antagonist was piddling at a mushroom or the 
haunch of a frog. I could perceive the lady was pleased with 
what I said, and we parted very good friends, by virtue of a 
maxim I always observe, Never to contradict or reason with a ' 
sprightly female. I went home, however, full of a great many 
serious reflections upon what had passed, and though, in com- 
plaisance, I disguised my sentiments, to keep up the good 
humor of my fair companions, and to avoid being looked upon 
as a testy old fellow, yet out of the good-will I bear to the sex, 
and to prevent for the future their being imposed upon by 
counterfeits, I shall give them the distinguishing marks of a 
true fine gentleman. 

When a good artist would express any remarkable character 
in sculpture, he endeavors to work up his figure into all the 
perfections his imagination can form, and to imitate not so 
much what is, as what may or ought to be. I shall follow their 
example, in the idea I am going to trace out of a fine gentle- 
man, by assembling together such qualifications as seem 
requisite to make the character complete* In order to this I 
shall premise, in general, that by a fine gentleman I mean a man 
completely qualified as well for the service and good as for the 
ornament and delight of society. When I consider the frame of 
mind peculiar to a gentleman, I suppose it graced with all the 
dignity and elevation of spirit that human nature is capable of. 
To this I would have joined a clear- understanding, a reason 
free from prejudice, a steady judgment,' and an extensive 
knowledge. When I think of the heart of a gentleman, I 
imagine it firm and intrepid, void of all inordinate passions, 
and full of tenderness, compassion, and benevolence. When I 
view the fine gentleman with regard to his manners, methinks 
I see him modest without bashfulness, frank and affable with- 
out impertinence, obhging and complaisant without serviHty, 



156 RICHARD STEELE 

cheerful and in good humor without noise. These amiable 
qualities are not easily obtained; neither are there many men 
that have a genius to excel this way. A finished gentleman is 
perhaps the most uncommon of all the great characters in life. 
Besides the natural endowments with which this distinguished 
man is to be born, he must run through a long series of educa- 
tion. Before he makes his appearance and shines in the 
world, he must be principled in reUgion, instructed in all the 
moral virtues, and led through the whole course of the polite 
arts and sciences. He should be no stranger to courts and to 
camps; he must travel to open his mind, to enlarge his views, 
to learn the policies and interests of foreign states, as well as 
to fashion and polish himself, and to get clear of national 
prejudices, of which every country has its share. To all these 
more essential improvements he must not forget to add the 
fashionable ornaments of life, such as are the languages and 
the bodily exercises most in vogue; neither would I have him 
think even dress itself beneath his notice. 

It is no very uncommon thing in the world to meet with men 
of probity; there are likewise a great many men of honor to be 
found. Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are 
frequent; but a true fine gentleman is what one seldom sees. 
He is properly a compound of the various good qualities that 
embellish mankind. As the great poet animates all the differ- 
ent parts of learning by the force of his genius, and irradiates 
all the compass of his knowledge by the lustre and brightness 
of his imagination, so all the great and solid perfections of life 
appear in the finished gentleman, with a beautiful gloss and 
varnish. Everything he says or does is accompanied with a 
manner, or rather a charm, that draws the admiration and 
good-will of every beholder. 

ADVERTISEMENT 

for the Benefit of my Female Readers 
N. B. The gilt chariot, the diamond ring, the gold snuff-box, 
and brocade sword-knot, are no essential parts of a fine gentle- 
man, but may be used by him, provided he casts his eye upon 
them but once a day. 



MR. STEELE'S APOLOGY 157 



MR. STEELE'S APOLOGY FOR HIMSELF 

AND HIS WRITINGS, OCCASIONED BY HIS EXPULSION 
FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

I7I4 

[Steele was expelled from the House of Commons on March 18, 17 14, 
having been accused of uttering seditious libels, after the publication of 
some of his most vigorous political pamphlets. In reply to the majority 
party, and in self-defense, he issued the Apology, which is now chiefly 
remembered for the summary of his literary career included in the follow- 
ing extract.] 

... I FLATTER mysclf that I shall convince all my fellow- 
subjects of my innocence from the following circumstances, 
allowed to be of weight in all trials of this nature: from the 
general character of the offender, the motive to his offense, 
and the character of the persons who appear for him, opposed 
to those who are against him. There are some points to be 
allowed which bear hard against the prisoner at the bar, and 
we must grant this by way of confessing and avoiding, and 
give it up, that the defendant has been as great a libertine as a 
confessor. We will suppose, then, a witness giving an account 
of him, who, if he spoke true, would say as follows: — 

"I have been long acquainted with Mr. Steele, who is ac- 
cused as a mahcious writer, and can give an account of him 
(from what he used to confess to us his private friends) , what 
was the chief motive of his first appearing in print. Besides 
this, I have read everything he has writ or pubhshed. He first 
became an author when an ensign of the Guards, a way of life 
exposed to much irregularity, and, being thoroughly con- 
vinced of many things of which he often repented and which 
he more often repeated, he writ, for his own private use, a 
little book called The Christian Hero, with a design principally 
to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and 
religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity toward unwar- 
rantable pleasures. This secret admonition was too weak; he 
therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a 
standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world 
(that is to say, of his acquaintance) upon him in a new h'ght, 
might curb his desires, and make him ashamed of understand- 



158 RICHARD STEELE 

ing and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so quite 
contrary a life. This had no other good effect but that, from 
being thought no undelightful companion, he was soon reck- 
oned a disagreeable fellow. One or two of his acquaintance 
thought fit to misuse him, and try their valor upon him, and 
everybody he knew measured the least levity in his words and 
actions with the character of a Christian hero. Thus he found 
himself slighted, instead of being encouraged, for his declara- 
tions as to rehgion, and it was now incumbent upon him to 
enliven his character; for which reason he writ the comedy 
called The Funeral, in which (though full of incidents that move 
laughter) virtue and vice appear just as they ought to do. 
Nothing can make the town so fond of a man as a successful 
play, and this, with some particulars enlarged upon to his 
advantage (for princes never hear good or evil in the manner 
others do), obtained him the notice of the king, and his name, 
to be provided for, was in the last table-book ever worn by the 
glorious and immortal William the Third. 

"His next appearance as a writer was in the quality of the 
lowest minister of state, to wit, in the office of Gazetteer, 
where he worked faithfully according to order, without ever 
erring against the rule observed by all ministries, to keep that 
paper very innocent and very insipid. 

"It is believed it was to the reproaches he heard every 
Gazette-day against the writer of it, that the defendant owes 
the fortitude of being remarkably neghgent of what people say, 
which he does not deserve, except in so great cases as that now 
before us. His next productions were still plays, then the 
Tatler, then the Spectator, then the Guardian, then the Eng- 
lishman. And now, though he has published and scribbled so 
very much, he may defy any man to find one leaf in all these 
writings which is not, in point, a defense against this impu- 
tation; to find a leaf which does not mediately or immediately 
tend to the honor of the Queen or the service of the nobility 
and gentry, or which is not particularly respectful to the uni- 
versities. Farther this witness sayeth not." . . . 



JOSEPH ADDISON 

THE SPECTATOR 

[For the dates, etc., of this periodical, see above under Steele. Addison 
wrote 274 of the papers, signing them by one of the four letters in the n"ame 
of the muse Clio. The most characteristic element in his contributions 
was that of literary criticism; his purpose in this connection is described 
in the important passage at the close of No. 409, reprinted below.] 

No. 10. Monday, March 12, 171 1 

Non aliler quant qui adverse vix flumine lembum 

Remigiis subigit : si brachia forte remisil, 

Atque ilium in prcEceps prono rapit alveus amni. — ViRG. 

It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city in- 
quiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my 
morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. 
My pubHsher tells me that there are already three thousand of 
them distributed every day. So that if I allow twenty readers 
to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I 
rnay reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and 
Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish them- 
selves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and unatten- 
tive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audi- 
ence, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, 
and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavor 
to enliven morahty with wit, and to temper wit with morahty, 
that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account 
in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue 
and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts 
of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day 
to day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate state 
of vice and folly into which the age is fallen. The mind that 
lies fallow but a single day, sprouts up in follies that are only 
to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said 
of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to 
inhabit among men ; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of 
me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, 



i6o JOSEPH ADDISON 

schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea- 
tables and in coffee-houses. 

I would therefore in a very particular manner recommend 
these my speculations to all well-regulated families, that set 
apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter ; 
and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this 
paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a 
part of the tea-equipage. 

Sir Francis Bacon observes that a well written book, com- 
pared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses's serpent, 
that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the 
Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as to think that where the 
Spectator appears, the other public prints will vanish; but shall 
leave it to my reader's consideration whether, is it not much 
better to be let into the knowledge of one's self, than to hear 
what passes in Muscovy or Poland ; and to amuse ourselves with 
such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, 
and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame 
hatreds and make enmities irreconcilable? 

In the next place, I would recommend this paper to the daily 
perusal of those gentlemen whom I cannot but consider as my 
good brothers and allies, — I mean the fraternity of spectators, 
who live in the world without having anything to do in it, and, 
either by the affluence of their fortunes, or laziness of their dis- 
positions, have no other business with the rest of mankind, 
but to look upon them. Under this class of men are compre- 
hended all contemplative tradesmen, titular physicians, fel- 
lows of the Royal Society, Templars that are not given to be 
contentious, and statesmen that are out of business; in short, 
every one that considers the world as a theatre, and desires to 
form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it. 

There is another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim 
to, whom I have lately called the blanks of society, as being 
altogether unfurnished with ideas, till the business and con- 
versation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered 
these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration, when I 
have heard them asking the first man they have met with, 
whether there was any news stirring? and by that means 
gathering together materials for thinking. These needy per- 
sons do not know what to talk of, till about twelve o'clock in 



THE SPECTATOR i6i 

the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of 
the weather, know which way the wind sits, and whether the 
Dutch mail be come in. As they He at the mercy of the first 
man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, 
according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morn- 
ing, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their 
chambers till they have read this paper, and to promise them 
that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome 
sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation 
for the ensuing twelve hours. 

But there are none to whom this paper will be more useful, 
than to the female world. I have often thought there has not 
been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments 
and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem con- 
trived for them rather as they are women than as they are 
reasonable creatures, and are more adapted to the sex than to 
the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the 
right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their 
lives. The sorting of a suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good 
morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's 
or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything 
else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sew- 
ing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the prepara- 
tion of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of 
ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those 
of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an 
exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the 
beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a 
kind of awe and respect, as well as love, into their male be- 
holders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing 
this daily paper, which I shall always endeavor to make an 
innocent if not an improving entertainment, and by that means 
at least divert the minds of my female readers from greater 
trifles. At the same time, as I would fain give some finishing 
touches to those which are already the most beautiful pieces in 
human nature, I shall endeavor to point out all those imper- 
fections that are the blemishes, as well as those virtues which 
are the embellishments, of the sex. In the meanwhile I hope 
these my gentle readers, who have so much time on their hands, 
will not grudge throwing away a quarter of an hour in a day 



i62 JOSEPH ADDISON 

on this paper, since they may do it without any hindrance to 
business. 

I know several of my friends and well-wishers are in great 
pain for me, lest I should not be able to keep up the spirit of a 
paper which I oblige myself to furnish every day ; but to make 
them easy in this particular, I will promise them faithfully to 
give it over as soon as I grow dull. This I know will be matter 
of great raillery to the small wits, who will frequently put me 
in mind of my promise, desire me to keep my word, assure me 
that it is high time to give over, with many other little pleas- 
antries of the like nature, which men of a little smart genius 
cannot forbear throwing out against their best friends, when 
they have such a handle given them of being witty. But let 
them remember that I do hereby enter my caveat against this 
piece of raillery. 

No. i6. Monday, March 19, 17 11 

Quid verum atque decens euro el rogo, el omnis in hoc sum. — HOR. 

I have received a letter desiring me to be very satirical upon 
the little muff that is now in fashion. Another informs me of a 
pair of silver garters buckled below the knee, that have been 
lately seen at the Rainbow Coffee-house in Fleet Street. A 
third sends me a heavy complaint against fringed gloves. To 
be brief, there is scarce an ornament of either sex which one 
or other of my correspondents has not inveighed against with 
some bitterness, and recommended to my observation. I must, 
therefore, once for all inform my readers that it is not my in- 
tention to sink the dignity of this my paper with reflection 
upon red heels or top-knots, but rather to enter into the pas- 
sions of mankind, and to correct those depraved sentiments 
that give birth to all those little extravagances which appear 
in their outward dress and behavior. Foppish and fantastic . 
ornaments are only indications of vice, not criminal in them- 
selves. Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally re- 
trench the Httle superfluities of garniture and equipage. The 
blossoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes 
them is destroyed. 

I shall therefore, as I have said, apply my remedies to the 
first seeds and principles of an affected dress, without descend- 



THE SPECTATOR 163 

ing to the dress itself ; though at the same time I must own that 
I have thoughts of creating an officer under me, to be entitled 
the Censor of Small Wares, and of allotting him one day in the 
week for the execution of such his office. An operator of this 
nature might act under me, with the same regard as a surgeon 
to a physician; the one might be employed in healing those 
blotches and tumors which break out in the body, while the 
other is sweetening the blood and rectifying the constitution. 
To speak truly, the young people of both sexes are so wonder- 
fully apt to shoot out into long swords or sweeping trains, bushy 
head-dresses or full-bottomed periwigs, with several other en- 
cumbrances of dress, that they stand in need of being pruned 
very frequently, lest they should be oppressed with ornaments, 
and overrun with the luxuriancy of their habits. I am much 
in doubt whether I should give the preference to a Quaker that 
is trimmed close, and almost cut to the quick, or to a beau that 
is loaden with such a redundance of excrescences. I must 
therefore desire my correspondents to let me know how they 
approve my project, and whether they think the erecting of 
such a petty censorship may not turn to the emolument of the 
public; for I would not do anything of this nature rashly and 
without advice. 

There is another set of correspondents to whom I must 
address myself in the second place: I mean such as fill their 
letters with private scandal, and black accounts of particular 
persons and families. The world is so full of ill-nature that 
I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and 
satires composed by those who scarce know how to write. By 
the last post in particular, I received a packet of scandal which 
is not legible, and have a whole bundle of letters in women's 
hands, that are full of blots and calumnies; insomuch that, 
when I see the name of Celia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at 
the bottom of a scrawl, I conclude of course that it brings me 
some account of a fallen virgin, a faithless wife, or an amorous 
widow. I must therefore inform these my correspondents, that 
it is not my design to be a publisher of intrigues, or to bring 
little infamous stories out of their present lurking-holes into 
broad daylight. If I attack the vicious, I shall only set upon 
them in a body, and will not be provoked by the worst usage I 
can receive from others to make an example of any particular 



i64 JOSEPH ADDISON 

criminal. In short, I have so much of a Drawcansir^ in me, 
that I shall pass over a single foe to charge whole armies. It is 
not Lais or Silenus, but the harlot and the drunkard, whom I 
shall endeavor to expose; and shall consider the crime as it 
appears in the species, not as it is circumstanced in an indi- 
vidual. I think it was Caligula who wished the whole city of 
Rome had but one neck, that he might behead them at a blow. 
I shall do, out of humanity, what that emperor would have 
done in the cruelty of his temper, and aim every stroke at a 
collective body of offenders. At the same time I am very sen- 
sible that nothing spreads a paper Hke private calumny and 
defamation; but as my speculations are not under this neces- 
sity, they are not exposed to this temptation. 

In the next place I must apply myself to my party corre- 
spondents, who are continually teasing me to take notice of one 
another's proceedings. How often am I asked by both sides if 
it is possible for me to be an unconcerned spectator of the 
rogueries that are committed by the party which is opposite 
to him that writes the letter. About two days since I was re- 
proached with an old Grecian law, that forbids any man to 
stand as a neuter, or a looker-on, in the divisions of his country. 
However, as I am very sensible my paper would lose its whole 
effect, should it run into the outrages of a party, I shall take 
care to keep clear of everything which looks that way. If I can 
any way assuage private inflammations, or allay public fer- 
ments, I shall apply my heart to it with my utmost endeavors; 
but will never let my heart reproach me with having done 
anything towards increasing those feuds and animosities that 
extinguish rehgion, deface government, and make a nation 
miserable. 

What I have said under the three foregoing heads will, I am 
afraid, very much retrench the number of my correspondents. 
I shall therefore acquaint my reader that, if he has started 
any hint which he is not able to pursue, if he has met with any 
surprising story which he does not know how to tell, if he has 
discovered any epidemical vice which has escaped my observa- 
tion, or has heard of any uncommon virtue which he would 
desire to publish, — in short, if he has any materials that can 
furnish out an innocent diversion, I shall promise him my best 

> A hero in The Rehearsal, burlesquing Dryden's Almanzor. ; 



THE SPECTATOR 165 

assistance in the working of them up for a pubHc entertain- 
ment. . . . 

No. 18. Wednesday, March 21, 1711 

— Eqiiilis quoqucjam migravil ab aure voliiplas 
Omnis ad incertos oculos et gaudia vana. — Hor. 

It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a 
faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual pro- 
gress which it has made upon the Enghsh stage ; for there is no 
question but our great-grandchildren will be very curious to 
know the reason why their forefathers used to sit together like 
an audience of foreigners in their own country, and to hear 
whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not 
understand. 

Arisinoe^ was the first opera that gave us a taste of Italian 
music. The great success this opera met with produced some, 
attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should 
give a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what 
can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation. This 
alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, who were used 
to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware, and therefore laid 
down an estabhshed rule, which is received as such to this day, 
"That nothing is capable of being well set to music, that is not 
nonsense." 

This maxim was no sooner received, but we immediately fell 
to translating the Italian operas; and as there was no danger of 
hurting the sense of those extraordinary pieces, our authors 
would often make words of their own which were entirely 
foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to trans- 
late; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English 
verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might 
go to the same tune. Thus the famous song in Camilla, 

Barbara, si, t'intendo, etc. 

Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning, 

which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was trans- 
lated into that English lamentation, 

Frail are a lover's hopes, etc. 
• By Clayton (1705). 



i66 JOSEPH ADDISON 

And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of 
the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that 
were filled with a spirit of rage and indignation. It happened 
also very frequently, where the sense was rightly translated, 
the necessary transposition of words which were drawn out of 
the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music 
appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the 
other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word : 

And turned my rage into pity; 

which the EngHsh for rhyme's sake translated, 

And into pity turned my rage. 

By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the 
ItaHan, fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry 
sounds that were tuned to rage in the original, were m'ade to 
express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened, like- 
wise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insig- 
nificant words in the sentence. I have known the word and 
pursued through the whole gamut, have been entertained with 
many a melodious the, and have heard the most beautiful 
graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon then, for, and 
from, to the eternal honor of our English particles. 

The jiext. step to our refinement was the introducing of 
Italian actors into our opera, who sung their parts in their own 
language, at the same time that our countrymen performed 
theirs in our native tongue. The king or hero of the play gen- 
erally spoke in Italian, and his slaves answered him in English; 
the lover frequently made his court, and gained the heart of 
his princess, in a language which she did not understand. One 
would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dia- 
logues after this manner, without an interpreter between the 
persons that conversed together; but this was the state of the 
English stage for about three years. 

At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the 
opera, and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the, fatigue 
of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera 
is performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand 
the language of our own stage; insomuch that I have often 
been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chatter- 



THE SPECTATOR 167 

ing in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us 
names, and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since 
we do put such an entire confidence in them, they will not talk 
against us before our faces, though they may do it with the 
same safety as if it were behind our backs. In the mean time, 
I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian who writes 
two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the taste 
of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection: "In 
the beginning of the eighteenth century the Italian tongue was 
so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the 
public stage in that language." 

One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an 
absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want 
any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous 
practice; but what makes it the more astonishing, it is not the 
taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness, 
which has established it. 

If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, 
the English have a genius for other performances of a much 
higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler 
entertainment. Would one think it was possible, at a time 
when an author ^ lived that was able to write the Phccdra and 
Hippolitus, for a people to be so stupidly fond of the Itahan 
opera, as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable 
tragedy? Music is certainly a very agreeable entertainment, 
but if it would take the entire possession of our ears, if it would 
make us incapable of hearing sense, if it would exclude arts 
that have a much greater tendency to the refinement of human 
nature, I must confess I would allow it no better quarter than 
Plato has done, who banishes it out of his commonwealth. 

At present our notions of music are so very uncertain that 
we do not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are 
transported with anything that is not EngHsh; so it be of a for- 
eign growth, let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the 
same thing. In short, our English music is quite rooted out, and 
nothing yet planted in its stead. 

When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at 
liberty to present his plan for a new one; and though it be but 
indifferently put together, it may furnish several hints that 

* Edmund Smith. 



i68 JOSEPH ADDISON 

may be of use to a good architect. I shall take the same liberty, 
in a following paper, of giving my opinion upon the subject of 
music; which I shall lay down only in a problematical manner, 
to be considered by those who are masters in the art. 

No. 26. Friday, March 30, 171 1 

Pallida mors aqiio pulsat pede paupcrum tabernas 

Rcgiimque turres, O heate Sexli, 
Vitce siimma brevis spent nos vctal inchoare longam: 

Jam te premet nox, fabulceque manes, 
Et domus exilis Plutonia. — Hor. 

When I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself 
in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and 
the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the build- 
ing, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill 
the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, 
that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon 
in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing my- 
self with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in 
those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded 
nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon 
one day, and died upon another; the whole history of his life 
being comprehended in those two circumstances that are com- 
mon to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers 
of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire 
upon the departed persons, who had left no other memorial of 
them but that they were born and that they died. They put 
me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic 
poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other 
reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for 
nothing but being knocked on the head. 

T\avKbv re M^Soyrd re QepaVkox^v re. — HoM. 
Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque. — Virg. 

The life of these men is finely described in Holy Writ by " the 
path of an arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost. 

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with 
the digging of a grave, and saw, in every shovelful of it that 
was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with 
a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had 
a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I 



THE SPECTATOR 169 

began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes 
of people lay confused together under the pavement of that 
ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, 
priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled 
amongst one another, and blended together in the same com- 
mon mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, 
weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same 
promiscuous heap of matter. 

After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortahty, 
as it were, in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the 
accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are 
raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them 
were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were 
possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he 
would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed 
upon him. There are others so excessively modest that they 
deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or He- 
brew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelve- 
month. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who 
had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I 
observed indeed that the present war had filled the church with 
many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected 
to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried 
in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean. 

I could not but be very much delighted with several modern 
epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression 
and justness of thought, and therefore do honor to the living as 
well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an 
idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation, from the turn of 
their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be sub- 
mitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius, before they 
are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has 
very often given me great offense: instead of the brave rough 
English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of 
that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the 
figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing him- 
self upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscrip- 
tion is answerable to the monument; for instead of celebrating 
the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service 
of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his 



170 JOSEPH ADDISON 

death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honor. 
The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, 
show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and pohteness in 
their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet 
with in those of our own country. The monuments of their 
admirals, which have been erected at the pubhc expense, 
represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral 
crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea- 
weed, shells, and coral. 

But to return to our subject. I have left the repository of 
our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when 
I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I 
know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark 
and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imagina- 
tions; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do 
not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a 
view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same 
pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means 
I can improve myself with those objects which others consider 
with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every 
emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the 
beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with 
the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with 
compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, 
I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must 
quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed 
them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the. 
holy men that divided the world with their contests and dis- 
putes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little 
competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read 
the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, 
and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when 
we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance 
together. 

No. 34. Monday, April 9, 171 1 

— parcit 
Cognatis maculis similis fera. — Juv. 

The club of which I am a member is very luckily composed 
of such persons as are engaged in different ways of Ufe, and 



THE SPECTATOR 171 

deputed, as it were, out of the most conspicuous classes of 
mankind. By this means I am furnished with the greatest 
variety of hints and materials, and know everything that passes 
in the different quarters and divisions, not only of this great 
city, but of the whole kingdom. My readers, too, have the 
satisfaction to find that there is no rank or degree among 
them who have not their representative in this club, and that 
there is always somebody present who will take care of their 
respective interests, that nothing may be written or pub- 
lished to the prejudice or infringement of their just rights 
and privileges. 

I last night sat very late in company with this select body 
of friends, who entertained me with several remarks which 
they and others had made upon these my speculations, as also 
with the various success which they had met with among their 
several ranks and degrees of readers. Will Honeycomb told 
me, in the softest manner he could, that there were some ladies 
(''but for your comfort," says Will, "they are not those of the 
most wit") that were offended at the liberties I had taken with 
the opera and the puppet-show; that some of them were hke- 
wise very much surprised that I should think such serious 
points as the dress and equipage of persons of quahty, proper 
subjects for raillery. 

■^ He was going on, when Sir Andrew Freeport took him up 
short, and told him that the papers he hinted at had done great 
good in the city, and that all their wives and daughters were 
the better for them; and farther added that the whole City 
thought themselves very much obliged to me for declaring my 
generous intentions to scourge vice and folly as they appear 
in a multitude, without condescending to be a pubhsher of 
particular intrigues. "In short," says Sir Andrew, "if you 
avoid that foolish beaten road of falHng upon aldermen and 
citizens, and employ your pen upon the vanity and luxury of 
courts, your paper must needs be of general use." 

Upon this, my friend the Templar told Sir Andrew that he 
wondered to hear a man of his sense talk after that manner; 
that the City had always been the province for satire; and that 
the wits of King Charles's time jested upon nothing else during 
his whole reign. He then showed, by the examples of Horace, 
Juvenal, Boileau, and the best writers of every age, that the 



172 JOSEPH ADDISON 

follies of the stage and court had never been accounted too 
sacred for ridicule, how great soever the persons might be that 
patronized them. "But after all," says he, "I think your rail- 
lery has made too great an excursion, in attacking several per- 
sons of the Inns of Court, and I do not believe you can show me 
any precedent for your behavior in that particular." 

My good friend Sir Roger de Coverley, who had said nothing 
all this while, began his speech with a Pish! and told us that he 
wondered to see so many men of sense so very serious upon 
fooleries. "Let our good friend," says he, "attack every one 
that deserves it. I would only advise you, Mr. Spectator," 
applying himself to me, "to take care how you m.eddle with 
country squires. They are the ornaments of the English na- 
tion, — men of good heads and sound bodies; and, let me tell 
you, some of them take it ill of you that you mention fox- 
hunters with so little respect." 

Captain Sentry spoke very sparingly on this occasion. What 
he said was only to commend my prudence in not touching 
upon the army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly 
in that point. 

By this time I found every subject of my speculations was 
taken away from me by one or other of the club, and began 
to think myself in the condition of the good man that had one 
wife who took a dislike to his gray hair, and another to his 
black, till by their picking out what each of them had an aver- 
sion to, they left his head altogether bald and naked. 

While I was thus musing with myself, my worthy friend the 
clergyman, who — very luckily for me — was at the club that 
night, undertook my cause. He told us that he wondered any 
order of persons should think themselves too considerable to 
be advised. That it was not quality, but innocence, which 
exempted men from reproof. That vice and folly ought to be 
attacked wherever they could be met with, and especially 
when they were placed in high and conspicuous stations of 
life. He farther added that my paper would only serve to ag- 
gravate the pains of poverty, if it chiefly exposed those who 
are already depressed, and in some measure turned into ridi- 
cule, by the meanness of their conditions and circumstances. 
He afterwards proceeded to take notice of the great use this 
paper m.ight be of to the public, by reprehending those vices 



THE SPECTATOR 173 

which are too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too 
fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit. He then advised 
me to prosecute my undertaking with cheerfulness, and as- 
sured me that, whoever might be displeased with me, I should 
be approved by all those whose praises do honor to the persons 
on whom they are bestowed. 

The whole club pay a particular deference to the discourse 
of this gentleman, and are drawn into what he says as much 
by the candid, ingenuous manner with which he delivers him- 
self, as by the strength of argument and force of reason which 
he makes use of. Will Honeycomb immediately agreed that 
what he had said was right, and that, for his part, he would not 
insist upon the quarter which he had demanded for the ladies. 
Sir Andrew gave up the City with the same frankness. The 
Templar would not stand out, and was followed by Sir Roger 
and the Captain, who all agreed that I should be at liberty to 
carry the war into what quarter I pleased, provided I con- 
tinued to combat with criminals in a body, and to assault the 
vice without hurting the person. 

This debate, which was held for the good of mankind, put 
me in mind of that which the Roman triumvirate were for- 
merely engaged in for their destruction. Every man at first 
stood hard for his friend, till they found that by this means 
they should spoil their proscription; and at length, making a 
sacrifice of all their acquaintance and relations, furm'shed out a 
very decent execution. 

Having thus taken my resolutions to march on boldly in the 
cause of virtue and good sense, and to annoy their adversaries 
in whatever degree or rank of men they may be found, I shall 
be deaf for the future to all the remonstrances that shall be 
made to me on this account. If Punch grows extravagant, I 
shall reprimand him very freely. If the stage becomes a nur- 
sery of folly and impertinence, I shall not be afraid to anim- 
advert upon it. In short, if I meet with anything in City, court, 
or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use 
my utmost endeavors to make an example of it. I must, how- 
ever, entreat every particular person who does me the honor to 
be a reader of this paper, never to think himself, or any one of 
his friends or enemies, aimed at in what is said; for I promise 
him never to draw a faulty character which does not fit at least 



174 JOSEPH ADDISON 

a thousand people, or to publish a single paper that is not 
written in the spirit of benevolence and with a love of mankind. 

No. 40. Monday, April 16, 171 1 

Ac ne forte pules me, quae facer e ipse recusem, 

Cum rede tfactant alii, laudare maligne; 

Ille per extentum funem mihi posse mdetiir 

Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniler angit, 

Irrilal, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, 

Ut magus; et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. — HoR. 

The English writers of tragedy are possessed with a notion 
that when they represent a virtuous or innocent person in dis- 
tress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him 
out of his troubles, or made him triumph over his enemies. 
This error they have been led into by a ridiculous doctrine in 
modern criticism, that they are obliged to an equal distribu- 
tion of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution 
of poetical justice. Who were the first that established this rule 
I know not; but I am sure it has no foundation in nature, in 
reason, or in the practice of the ancients. We find that good 
and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave ; and as 
the principal design of tragedy is to raise commiseration and 
terror in the minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great 
end if we always make virtue and innocence happy and suc- 
cessful. Whatever crosses and disappointments a good man 
suffers in the body of the tragedy, they will make but small 
impression on our minds, when we know that in the last act he 
is to arrive at the end of his wishes and desires. W^hen we see 
him engaged in the depth of his afflictions, we are apt to com- 
fort ourselves, because we are sure he will find his way out of 
them, and that his grief, how great soever it may be at present, 
will soon terminate in gladness. For this reason the ancient 
writers of tragedy treated men in their plays, as they are dealt 
with in the world, by making virtue sometimes happy and 
sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they 
made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most 
agreeable manner. Aristotle considers the tragedies that were 
written in either of these kinds, and observes that those which 
ended unhappily had always pleased the people, and carried 
away the prize in the public disputes of the stage, from those 



THE SPECTATOR 



175 



that ended happily. Terror and commiseration leave a pleas- 
ing anguish in the mind, and fix the audience in such a serious 
composure of thought, as is much more lasting and delightful 
than any little transient starts of joy and satisfaction. Accord- 
ingly we find that more of our English tragedies have suc- 
ceeded, in which the favorites of the audience sink under their 
calamities, than those in which they recover themselves out of 
them. The best plays of this kind are The Orphan, Venice 
Preserved, Alexander the Great, Theodosius, All for Love, (Edipus, 
Oroonoko, Othello,^ etc. King Lear is an admirable tragedy of 
the same kind, as Shakespeare wrote it; but as it is reformed^ 
according to the chimerical notion of poetical justice, in my 
humble opinion it has lost half its beauty. At the same time I 
must allow that there are very noble tragedies which have 
been framed upon the other plan, and have ended happily; as 
indeed most of the good tragedies, which have been written 
since the starting of the above mentioned criticism, have taken 
this turn : as The Mourning Bride, Tamerlane, Ulysses, Phcedra 
and Hippolitus,^ with most of Mr. Dryden's. I must also allow 
that many of Shakespeare's, and several of the celebrated trage- 
dies of antiquity, are cast in the same form. I do not there- 
fore dispute against this way of writing tragedies, but against 
the criticism that would establish this as the only method, and 
by that means would very much cramp the English tragedy, 
and perhaps give a wrong bent to the genius of our writers. 

The tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English 
theatre, is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever 
entered into a poet's thoughts. An author might as well think 
of weaving the adventures of ^neas and Hudibras into one 
poem, as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow. 
But the absurdity of these performances is so very visible that 
I shall not insist upon it. 

The same objections which are made to tragi-comedy may 
in some measure be applied to all tragedies that have a double 
plot in them, which are Hkewise more frequent upon the Eng- 

' Of these plays, The Orphan and Venire Preserved arc by Otway, Alexander and Theo- 
dosius by Lee, All for Love by Dryden, QLdipus by Dryden and Lee, Oroonoko by Mrs. 
Behn. 

^ In an altered version, by Nahum Tate. 

' The Mourning Bride is by Congreve, Tamerlane a' Ulysses by Rowe, Phcedra by 
Edmund Smith (from Racine). 



176 JOSEPH ADDISON 

lish stage than upon any other; for though the grief of the 
audience, in such performances, be not changed into another 
passion, as in tragi-comedies, it is diverted upon another ob- 
ject, which weakens their concern for the principal action, and 
breaks the tide of sorrow by throwing it into different channels. 
This inconvenience, however, may in a great measure be cured, 
if not wholly removed, by the skillful choice of an under-plot, 
which may bear such a near relation to the principal design as 
to contribute towards the completion of it, and be concluded 
by the same catastrophe. 

There is also another particular which may be reckoned 
among the blemishes, or rather the false beauties, of our Eng- 
lish tragedy: I mean those particular speeches which are com- 
monly known by the name of "rants." The warm and passion- 
ate parts of a tragedy are always the most taking with the 
audience; for which reason we often see the players pronounc- 
ing, in all the violence of action, several parts of the tragedy 
which the author writ with great temper, and designed that 
they should have been so acted. I have seen Powell very often 
raise himself a loud clap by this artifice. The poets that were 
acquainted with this secret have given frequent occasion for 
such emotions in the actor, by adding vehemence to words 
where there was no passion, or inflaming a real passion into 
fustian. This hath filled the mouths of our heroes with bom- 
bast, and given them such sentiments as proceed rather from 
a swelling than a greatness of mind. Unnatural exclama- 
tions, curses, vows, blasphemies, a defiance of mankind, and 
an outraging of the gods, frequently pass upon the audience 
for towering thoughts, and have accordingly met with infinite 
applause. . . . 

No. 50. Friday, April 27, 1711 

Nunquam aliud nalura, alind sapientia dixit. — Juv. 

When the four Indian kings were in this country about a 
twelvemonth ago, I often mixed with the rabble, and followed 
them a whole day together, being wonderfully struck with the 
sight of everything that is new or uncommon. I have, since 
their departure, employed a friend to make many inquiries of 
their landlord the upholsterer, relating to their manners and 
conversation, as also concerning the remarks which they made 



THE SPECTATOR 177 

in this country; for, next to the forming a right notion of such 
strangers, I should be desirous of learning what ideas they have 
conceived of us. 

The upholsterer, finding my friend very inquisitive about 
these his lodgers, brought him some time since a httle bundle 
of papers, which he assured him were written by King Sa Ga 
Yean Qua Rash Tow, and, as he supposes, left behind by some 
mistake. These papers are now translated, and contain abun- 
dance of very odd observations, which I find this little fra- 
ternity of kings made during their stay in the isle of Great 
Britain. I shall present my reader with a short specimen of 
them in this paper, and may perhaps communicate more to 
him hereafter. In the article of London are the following words, 
which without doubt are meant of the church of St. Paul. 

"On the most rising part of the town there stands a huge 
house, big enough to contain the whole nation of which I am 
king. Our good brother E Tow O Koam, King of the Rivers, 
is of opinion it was made by the hands of that great God to 
whom it is consecrated. The Kings of Granajah and of the 
Six Nations believe that it was created with the earth, and 
produced on the same day with the sun and moon. But for 
my own part, by the best information that I could get of this 
matter, I am apt to think that this prodigious pile was fash- 
ioned into the shape it now bears by several tools and instru- 
ments, of which they have a wonderful variety in this country. 
It was probably at first an huge misshapen rock that grew upon 
the top of the hill, which the natives of the country (after 
having cut it into a kind of regular figure) bored and hollowed 
with incredible pains and industry, till they had wrought in it 
all those beautiful vaults and caverns into which it is divided 
at this day. As soon as this rock was thus curiously scooped 
to their liking, a prodigious number of hands must have been 
employed in chipping the outside of it, which is now as smooth 
as the surface of a pebble, and is in several places hewn out 
into pillars, that stand like the trunks of so many trees bound 
about the top with garlands of leaves. It is probable that when 
this great work was begun, which must have been many hun- 
dred years ago, there was some religion among this people; for 
they give it the name of a temple, and have a tradition that it 
was designed for men to pay their devotions in. And indeed 



178 JOSEPH ADDISON 

there are several reasons which make us think that the natives 
of this country had formerly among them some sort of wor- 
ship, for they set apart every seventh day as sacred; but upon 
my going into one of these holy houses on that day, I could 
not observe any circumstance of devotion in their behavior. 
There was indeed a man in black who was mounted above the 
rest, and seemed to utter something with a great deal of 
vehemence; but as for those underneath him, instead of pay- 
ing their worship to the deity of the place, they were most of 
them bowing and curtsying to one another, and a considerable 
number of them fast asleep. 

"The queen of the country appointed two men to attend us, 
that had enough of our language to make themselves under- 
stood in some few particulars. But we soon perceived these 
two were great enemies to one another, and did not always 
agree in the same story. We could make a shift to gather out 
of one of them, that this island was very much infested with a 
monstrous kind of animals, in the shape of men, called Whigs; 
and he often told us that he hoped we should meet with none 
of them in our way, for that if we did, they would be apt to 
knock us down for being kings. 

"Our other interpreter used to talk very much of a kind of 
animal called a Tory, that was as great a monster as the Whig, 
and would treat us as ill for being foreigners. These two crea- 
tures, it seems, are born with a secret antipathy to one an- 
other, and engage when they meet as naturally as the elephant 
and the rhinoceros. But as we saw none of either of these 
species, we are apt to think that our guides deceived us with 
misrepresentations and fictions, and amused us with an account 
of such monsters as are not really in their country. 

"These particulars we made a shift to pick out from the 
discourse of our interpreters, which we put together as well as 
we could, being able to understand but here and there a word 
of what they said, and afterwards making up the meaning of 
it among ourselves. The men of the country are very cunning 
and ingenious in handicraft works, but withal so very idle that 
we often saw young lusty rawboned fellows carried up and 
down the streets in little covered rooms by a couple of porters, 
who are hired for that service. Their dress is likewise very 
barbarous, for they almost strangle themselves about the neck, 



THE SPECTATOR 179 

and bind their bodies with many ligatures, that we are apt to 
think are the occasion of several distempers among them, 
which our country is entirely free from. Instead of those 
beautiful feathers with which we adorn our heads, they often 
buy up a monstrous bush of hair, which covers their heads, 
and falls down in a large fleece below the middle of their backs ; 
with which they walk up and down the streets, and are as 
proud of it as if it was of their own growth. 

"We were invited to one of their public diversions, where 
we hoped to have seen the great men of their country running 
down a stag or pitching a bar, that we might have discovered 
who were the persons of the greatest abilities among them; 
but instead of that, they conveyed us into a huge room lighted 
up with abundance of candles, where this lazy people sat still 
above three hours to see several feats of ingenuity performed 
by others, who it seems were paid for it. 
v^' As for_ the women of the country, not being able to talk 
with them, we could only make our remarks upon them at a 
distance. They let the hair of their heads grow to a great 
length; but as the men make a great show with heads of hair 
that are none of their own, the women, who they say have very 
fine heads of hair, tie it up in a knot, and cover it from being 
seen. The women look like angels, and would be more beauti- 
ful than the sun, were it not for little black spots that are apt 
to break out in their faces, and sometimes rise in very odd 
figures.^ I have observed that those little blemishes wear off 
very soon; but when they disappear in one part of the face, 
they are very apt to break out in another, insomuch that I have 
seen a spot upon the forehead in the afternoon, which was upon 
the chin in the morning." 

The author then proceeds to show the absurdity of breeches 
and petticoats, with many other curious observations, which 
I shall reserve for another occasion. I cannot, however, con- 
clude this paper without taking notice that, amidst these wild 
remarks, there now and then appears something very reason- 
able. I cannot likewise forbear observing that we are all guilty 
in some measure of the same narrow way of thinking which we 
meet with in this abstract of the Indian journal, when we fancy 
the customs, dresses, and manners of other countries are ridicu- 
lous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own. 

1 See No. Si, below. 



i8o JOSEPH ADDISON 

No. 62.^ Friday, May ii, 1711 

Scribendi rede sapere esl el principium et fans. — HoR. 

Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of 
\vijt and judgment, whereby he endeavors to show the reason 
why they are not always the talents of the same person. His 
words are as follow: "And hence, perhaps, may be given some 
reason of that common observation, that men who have a 
great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the 
clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying most in 
the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with 
quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance 
or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agree- 
able visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, hes quite 
on the other side, in separating carefully one from another 
ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to 
avoid being misled by similitude, and by afhnity to take one 
thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary 
to metaphor and allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that 
entertainment and pleasantry of wit, which strikes so lively 
on the fancy, and is therefore so acceptable to all people." 

This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account 
that I have ever met with of wit, which generally, though not 
always, consists in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas 
as this author mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of ex- 
planation, that every resemblance of ideas is not that which we 
call wit, unless it be such a one that gives delight and surprise 
to the reader. These two properties seem essential to wit, more 
particularly the last of them. In order, therefore, that the re- 
semblance in the ideas be wit, it is necessary that the ideas 
should not lie too near one another in the nature of things; 
for where the likeness is obvious, it gives no surprise. To com- 
pare one man's singing to that of another, or to represent the 
whiteness of any object by that of milk and snow, or the variety' 
of its colors by those of the rainbow, cannot be called wit, 
unless, besides this obvious resemblance, there be some farther 
congruity discovered in the two ideas, that is capable of giving 
the reader some surprise. Thus when a poet tells us the bosom 
of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the com- 

1 The fifth of six papers on Wit. 



THE SPECTATOR i8i 

parison; but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it 
then grows into wit. Every reader's memory may supply him 
with innumerable instances of the same nature. For this 
reason the similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavor rather to 
fill the mind with great conceptions than to divert it with such 
as are new and surprising, have seldom anything in them that 
can be called wit. Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short 
explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, — as 
metaphors, simiKtudes, allegories, enigmas, mottos, parables, 
fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all 
the methods of allusion. There are many other species of wit, 
how remote soever ihey may appear at first sight from the fore- 
going description, which upon examination will be found to 
agree with it. 

As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and con- 
gruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and 
congruity, sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chrono- t.^,.,^^*-'' 
grams, hpograms, and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in ' 

echoes and doggerel rhymes; and sometimes of whole sentences 
or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars. Nay, 
some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it even to ex- 
ternal mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious per- 
son that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of another. 

As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false 
wit in the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing 
instances, there is another kind of wit which consists partly 
in the resemblance of ideas, and partly in the resemblance of 
words, which for distinction sake I shall call mixed wit. This 
kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley, more than in any 
other author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great 
deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton had a 
genius much above it. Spenser is in the same class with Milton. 
The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are full of it. Monsieur 
Boileau, who formed himself upon the ancient poets, has 
everywhere rejected it with scorn. . . . 

Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose j^-t^..^ 
one instance which may be metVith in all the writers of this i>« „ 
class. The passion of love in its nature has been thought to 
resemble fire, for which reason the words fire and fi.ame are 
made use of to signify love. The witty poets therefore have 



i82 JOSEPH ADDISON 

taken an advantage from the double meaning of the word fire, 
to make an infinite number of witticisms. Cowley, observing 
the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the same time their 
power of producing love in him, considers them as burning- 
glasses made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the 
greatest extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be 
habitable. When his mistress has read his letter written in 
juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read 
it over a second time by love's flame. When she weeps, he 
wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops from the 
limbeck. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty, — that is, 
thirty degrees nearer the Pole than when she is with him. His 
ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his 
happy love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy love 
flames of hell. When it does not let him sleep, it is a flame that 
sends up no smoke ; when it is opposed by counsel and advice, 
it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing upon it. 
Upon the dying of a tree in which he had cut his loves, he 
observed that his written flames had burnt up and withered 
the tree. When he resolves to give over his passion, he tells us 
that one burnt like him forever dreads the fire. His heart is 
an ^tna, that, instead of Vulcan's shop, encloses Cupid's forge 
in it. His endeavoring to drown his love in wine is throwing oil 
upon the fire. He would insinuate to his mistress that the fire 
of love, like that of the sun (which produces so many hving 
creatures), should not only warm, but beget. Love, in another 
place, cooks pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the poet's heart 
is frozen in every breast, and sometimes scorched in every eye. 
Sometimes he is drowned in tears and burnt in love, hke a ship 
set on fire in the middle of the sea. 

The reader may observe in every one of these instances, that 
the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and, in 
the same sentence speaking of it both as a passion and as real 
fire, surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or 
contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of writ- 
ing. Mixed wit is therefore a composition of pun and true wit, 
and is more or less perfect as the resemblance lies in the ideas 
or in the words. Its foundations are laid partly in falsehood 
and partly in truth; reason puts in her claim for one half of it, 
and extravagance for the other. The only province, therefore, 



THE SPECTATOR 183 

for this kind of wit is epigram, or those Httle occasional poems 
that in their own nature are nothing else but a tissue of epi- 
grams. I cannot conclude this head of mixed wit without own- 
ing that the admirable poet out of whom I have taken the 
examples of it, had as much true wit as any author that ever 
writ, and indeed all other talents of an extraordinary genius. 

It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I 
should take notice of Mr. Dryden's definition of wit; which, 
with all the deference that is due to the judgment of so great 
a man, is not so properly a definition of wit as of good writing 
in general. Wit, as he defines it, is "a propriety of words and 
thoughts adapted to the subject." If this be a true definition 
of wit, I am apt to think that Euclid was the greatest wit that 
ever set pen to paper. It is certain there never was a greater 
propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject, than 
what that author has made use of in his Elements. I shall only 
appeal to my reader if this definition agrees with any notion 
he has of wit. If it be a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was 
not only a better poet, but a greater wit, than Mr. Cowley, and 
Virgil a much more facetious man than either Ovid or Martial. 

Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of 
all the French critics, has taken pains to show that it is im- 
possible for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and 
has not its foundation in the nature of things; that the basis 
of all wit is truth; and that no thought can be valuable of 
which good sense is not the ground- work. Boileau has en- 
deavored to inculcate the same notion in several parts of his 
writings, both in prose and verse. This is that natural way of 
writing, that beautiful simplicity, which we so much admire 
in the compositions of the ancients, and which nobody devi- 
ates from but those who want strength of genius to make a 
thought shine in its own natural beauties. Poets who want this 
strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature 
which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are 
forced to hunt after foreign ornaments, and not to let any 
piece of wit of what kind soever escape them. I look upon 
these writers as Goths in poetry, who, hke those in architecture, 
not being able to come up to the beautiful simplicity of the old 
Greeks and Romans, have endeavored to supply its place with 
all the extravagancies of an irregular fancy. . . . Were I not 



i84 JOSEPH ADDISON 

supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I 
should not venture to observe that the taste of most of our 
English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. .. ,. . 

No. 70. Monday, May 21, 171 1 

Interdum viilgus rectum videt. — Hor. 

When I traveled, I took a particular delight in hearing the 
songs and fables that are come from father to son, and are 
most in vogue among the common people of the countries 
through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything 
should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, 
though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not 
in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of 
man. Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures; 
and whatever falls in with it will meet with admirers amongst 
readers of all qualities and conditions. MoHere, as we are told 
by Monsieur Boileau, used to read all his comedies to an old 
woman who was his housekeeper, as she sat with him at her 
work by the chimney-corner, and could foretell the success of 
his play in the theatre, from the reception it met at his fire- 
side ; for he tells us the audience always followed the old woman, 
and never failed to laugh in the same place. 

I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent 
perfection of simplicity of thought, above that which I call 
the Gothic manner in writing, than this: the first pleases all 
kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to 
themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors 
and writers of epigram. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the 
language of their poems is understood, will please a reader of 
plain common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend 
an epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the con- 
trary, an ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the com- 
mon people, cannot fail to please all such readers as are not 
unquahfied for the entertainment by their affectation or igno- 
rance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of 
nature which recommend it to the most ordinary reader, will 
appear beautiful to the most refined. 

The old song of Chevy Chase is the favorite ballad of the 
common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say he had 



THE SPECTATOR 185 

rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir 
Philip Sidney, in his discourse of Poetry, speaks of it in the 
following words: "I never heard the old song of Percy and 
Douglas, that I found not my heart more moved than with a 
trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no 
rougher voice than rude style ; which being so evil appareled in 
the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work 
trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" For my own 
part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song that 
I shall give my reader a critique upon it, without any further 
apology for so doing. 

The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule that 
an heroic poem should be founded upon some important 
precept of morahty, adapted to the constitution of the country 
in which the poet writes. Homer and Virgil have formed their 
plans in this view. As Greece was a collection of many govern- 
ments, who suffered very much among themselves, and gave 
the Persian emperor, who was their common enemy, many 
advantages over them by their mutual jealousies and ani- 
mosities. Homer, in order to establish among them an union, 
which was so necessary for their safety, grounds his poem upon 
the discords of the several Grecian princes who were engaged 
in a confederacy against an Asiatic prince, and the several 
advantages which the enemy gained by such their discords. 
At the time the poem we are now treating of was written, the 
dissensions of the barons, who were then so many petty princes, 
ran very high, whether they quarreled among themselves, or 
with their neighbors, and produced unspeakable calamities to 
the country. The poet, to deter men from such unnatural con- 
tentions, describes a bloody battle and dreadful scene of death, 
occasioned by the mutual feuds which reigned in the families 
of an EngUsh and Scotch nobleman. That he designed this 
for the instruction of his poem, we may learn from his four 
last lines, in which, after the example of the modern trage- 
dians, he draws from it a precept for the benefit of his read- 
ers: — 

God save the King, and bless the land 

In plenty, joy, and peace; 
And grant henceforth that foul debate 

'Twixt noblemen may cease. 



i86 JOSEPH ADDISON 

The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets, hath 
been to celebrate persons and actions which do honor to their 
country: thus Virgil's hero was the founder of Rome, Homer's 
a prince of Greece; and for this reason Valerius Flaccus and 
Statius, who were both Romans, might be justly derided for 
having chosen the expedition of the Golden Fleece, and the 
Wars of Thebes, for the subject of their epic writings. 

The poet before us has not only found out an hero in his 
own country, but raises the reputation of it by several beauti- 
ful incidents. The English are the first who take the field, and 
the last who quit it. The English bring only fifteen hundred 
to the battle, and the Scotch two thousand. The English keep 
the field with fifty-three; the Scotch retire with fifty-five; all 
the rest on each side being slain in battle. But the most re- 
markable circumstance of this kind is the different manner 
in which the Scotch and English kings receive the news of this 
fight, and of the great men's deaths who commanded in it. , 

This news was brought to Edinburgh, 
Where Scotland's king did reign, j 

That brave Earl Douglas suddenly 
Was with an arrow slain. 

heavy news. King James did say; 
Scotland can witness be, 

1 have not any captain more 
Of such account as he. 

Like tidings to King Henry came 

Within as short a space. 
That Percy of Northumberland 

Was slain in Chevy-Chase. 

Now God be with him, said our King, 

Sith 't will no better be; 
I trust I have within my realm 

Five hundred as good as he. 

Yet shall not Scot nor Scotland say 

But I will vengeance take, 
And be revenged on them all 

For brave Lord Percy's sake. 

This vow full well the King performed 
After on Humble-down; 



THE SPECTATOR 187 

In one day fifty knights were slain, 
With lords of great renown. 

And of the rest of small account 
Did many thousand die, etc. j 

At the same time that our poet shows a laudable partiality to 
his countrymen, he represents the Scots after a manner not 
unbecoming so bold and brave a people. 

Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed, 

Most like a baron bold, 
Rode foremost of the company, 

Whose armor shone like gold. 

His sentiments and actions are every way suitable to an hero. 
"One of us two," says he, "must die. I am an earl as well as 
yourself, so that you can have no pretence for refusing the 
combat; however (says he), 'tis pity, and indeed would be a 
sin, that so many innocent men should perish for our sakes; 
rather let you and I end our quarrel in single fight." 

Ere thus I will outbraved be. 

One of us two shall die; 
I know thee well, an earl thou art, 

Lord Percy, so am I. 

But trust me, Percy, pity it were. 

And great offense, to kill 
Any of these our harmless men. 

For they have done no ill. 

Let thou and I the battle try. 

And set our men aside; 
Accurs'd be he, Lord Percy said. 

By whom this is denied. 

When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the 
battle and in single combat with each other, in the midst of 
a generous parley, full of heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl 
falls; and with his dying words encourages his men to revenge 
his death, representing to them, as the most bitter circum- 
stance of it, that his rival saw him fall. 

With that there came an arrow keen 

Out of an English bow. 
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart 

A deep and deadly blow. 



i88 JOSEPH ADDISON 

Who never spoke more words than these: 

Fight on, my merry men all, 
For why, my life is at an end, 

Lord Percy sees my fall. 

"Merry men," in the language of those times, is no more than 
a cheerful word for companions and fellow-soldiers. A passage 
in the eleventh book of Virgil's Mneids is very much to be 
admired, where Camilla, in her last agonies, instead of weeping 
over the wound she had received, as one might have expected 
from a warrior of her sex, considers only (like the hero of whom 
we are now speaking) how the battle should be continued after 
her death. 

Turn sic expirans, etc. 

A gathering mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes, 
And from her cheeks the rosy color flies. 
Then turns to her whom, of her female train, 
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain: 
Acca, 't is past! he swims before my sight, 
Inexorable death, and claims his right. 
Bear my last words to Turnus, fly with speed, 
And bid him timely to my charge succeed; 
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve; 
Farewell. 

Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner; though our poet 
seems to have had his eye upon Turnus's speech in the last 
verse, 

Lord Percy sees my fall. 

Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas 
Ausonii videre.^ 

Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, beauti- 
ful, and passionate; I must only caution the reader not to let 
the simplicity of the style, which one may well pardon in so 
old a poet, prejudice him against the greatness of the thought. 

Then leaving life. Earl Percy took 

The dead man by the hand. 
And said, Earl Douglas, for thy life 

Would I had lost my land. 

I "You conquered, and the Ausonii saw the' conquered man stretch forth his hands." 



THE SPECTATOR 189 

O Christ! my very heart doth bleed 

With sorrow for thy sake; 
For sure a more renowned knight 

Mischance did never take. 

That beautiful line, "Taking the dead man by the hand," will 
put the reader in mind of ^neas's behavior towards Lausus, 
whom he himself had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged 
father. 

At vero ut vultum vidit morientis, et era, 

Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris; 

Ingemuit, miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit, etc. 

The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead ; 

He grieved, he wept; then grasped his hand, and said: 

Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid 

To worth so great! 

I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts 
of this old song. 

No. 81. Saturday, June 2, 17 11 

Qualis ubi audilo venatitiim murmure tigris 
Horruit in maculas. — Statius. 

About the middle of last winter I went to see an opera at 
the theatre in the Haymarket, where I could not but take 
notice of two parties of very fine women, that had placed them- 
selves in the opposite side-boxes, and seemed drawn up in a 
kind of battle array one against another. After a short survey 
of them, I found they were patched differently; the faces on 
one hand being spotted on the right side of the forehead, and 
those upon the other on the left. I quickly perceived that they 
cast hostile glances upon one another, and that their patches 
were placed in those different situations, as party signals to 
distinguish friends from foes. In the middle boxes, between 
these two opposite bodies, were several ladies who patched in- 
differently on both sides of their faces, and seemed to sit there 
with no other intention but to see the opera. Upon inquiry I 
found that the body of Amazons on my right hand were Whigs, 
and those on my left Tories; and that those who had placed 
themselves in the middle boxes were a neutral party, whose 
faces had' not yet declared themselves. These last, however. 



I90 JOSEPH ADDISON 

as I afterwards found, diminished daily, and took their party 
with one side or the other; insomuch that I observed in several 
of them the patches, which were before dispersed equally, are 
now all gone over to the Whig or Tory side of the face. The 
censorious say that the men, whose hearts are aimed at, are 
very often the occasions that one part of the face is thus dis- 
honored, and Hes under a kind of disgrace, while the other is so 
much set off and adorned by the owner; and that the patches 
turn to the right or to the left, according to the principles of 
the man who is most in favor. But, whatever may be the 
motives of a few fantastical coquettes, who do not patch for 
the public good so much as for their own private advantage, 
it is certain that there are several women of honor who patch 
out of principle, and with an eye to the interest of their country. 
Nay, I am informed that some of them adhere so steadfastly 
to their party, and are so far from sacrificing their zeal for the 
public to their passion for any particular person, that in a late 
draught of marriage articles a lady has stipulated with her hus- 
band that, whatever his opinions are, she shall be at liberty 
to patch on which side she pleases. 

I must here take notice that Rosalinda, a famous Whig 
partisan, has most unfortunately a very beautiful mole on the 
Tory part of her forehead; which, being very conspicuous, has 
occasioned many mistakes, and given an handle to her enemies 
to misrepresent her face, as though it had revolted from the 
Whig interest. But, whatever this natural patch may seem to 
insinuate, it is well known that her notions of government are 
still the same. This unlucky mole, however, has misled several 
coxcombs, and, like the hanging out of false colors, made some 
of them converse with Rosalinda in what they thought the 
spirit of her party, when on a sudden she has given them an 
unexpected fire, that has sunk them all at once. If Rosalinda 
is unfortunate in her mole, Nigranilla is as unhappy in a pim- 
ple, which forces her, against her inclinations, to patch on the 
Whig side. 

I am told that many virtuous matrons, who formerly have 
been taught to believe that this artificial spotting of the face 
was unlawful, are now reconciled, by a zeal for their cause, to 
what they could not be prompted by a concern for their beauty. 
This way of declaring war upon one another puts me in mind 



THE SPECTATOR 191 

of what is reported of the tigress, that several spots rise in her 
skin when she is angry; or, as Mr. Cowley has imitated the 
verses that stand as the motto of this paper, — 

She swells with angry pride, 
And calls forth all her spots on every side. 

When I was in the theatre the time above mentioned, I had 
the curiosity to count the patches on both sides, and found the 
Tory patches to be about twenty stronger than the Whig ; but 
to make amends for this small inequality, I the next morning 
found the whole puppet-show filled with faces spotted after the 
Whiggish manner. Whether or no the ladies had retreated 
hither in order to rally their forces, I cannot tell; but the next 
night they came in so great a body to the opera, that they out- 
numbered the enemy. 

This account of party patches will, I am afraid, appear im- 
probable to those who live at a distance from the fashionable 
world; but as it is a distinction of a very singular nature, and 
what perhaps may never meet with a parallel, I think I should 
not have discharged the office of a faithful Spectator, had I 
not recorded it. 

I have, in former papers, endeavored to expose this party 
rage in women, as it only serves to aggravate the hatreds and 
animosities that reign among men, and in a great measure 
deprives the fair sex of those pecuhar charms with which nature 
has endowed them. 

When the Romans and Sabines were at war, and just upon 
the point of giving battle, the women who were allied to both 
of them interposed with so many tears and entreaties, that 
they prevented the mutual slaughter which threatened both 
parties, and united them together in a firm and lasting peace. 
I would recommend this noble example to our British ladies, 
at a time when their country is torn with so many unnatural 
divisions that, if they continue, it will be a misfortune to be 
born in it. The Greeks thought it so improper for women to 
interest themselves in competitions and contentions, that for 
this reason, among others, they forbade them, under pain of 
death, to be present at the Olympic games, notwithstanding 
these were the public diversions of all Greece. 
^ As our English women excel those of all nations in beauty, 



192 JOSEPH ADDISON 

they should endeavor to outshine them in all other accom- 
plishments proper to the sex, and to distinguish themselves as 
tender mothers and faithful wives, rather than as furious parti- 
sans. Female virtues are of a domestic turn. The family is the 
proper province for private women to shine in. If they must 
be showing their zeal for the pubUc, let it not be against those 
who are perhaps of the same family, or at least of the same 
reUgion or nation, but against those who are the open, pro- 
fessed, undoubted enemies of their faith, liberty and country. 
When the Romans were pressed with a foreign enemy, the 
ladies voluntarily contributed all their rings and jewels to 
assist the government under the public exigence, which ap- 
peared so laudable an action in the eyes of their countrymen, 
that from thenceforth it was permitted by a law to pronounce 
public orations at the funeral of a woman in praise of the 
deceased person, which till that time was peculiar to men. 
Would our English ladies, instead of sticking on a patch against 
those of their own country, show themselves so truly pubhc- 
spirited as to sacrifice every one her necklace against the common 
enemy, what decrees ought not to be made in favor of them? 

Since I am recollecting upon this subject such passages as 
occur to my memory out of ancient authors, I cannot omit a 
sentence in the celebrated funeral oration of Pericles which he 
made in honor of those brave Athenians that were slain in a 
fight with the Lacedemonians. After having addressed himself 
to the several ranks and orders of his countrymen, and shown 
them how they should behave themselves in the public cause, 
he turns to the female part of his audience: "And as for you," 
(says he) "I shall advise you in very few words: aspire only 
to those virtues that are peculiar to your sex ; follow your natu- 
ral modesty, and think it your greatest commendation not to 
be talked of one way or other." 

No. 159. Saturday, September i, 171 i 

Omncm, qua nunc ohduda tuenti 
Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et hnmida circum 
Caligat, nubem eripiam. — Virg. 

When I was at Grand Cairo I picked up several oriental 
manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others I met 



THE SPECTATOR 193 

with one entitled "The Visions of Mirzah," which I have read 
over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to the public when 
I have no other entertainment for them; and shall begin with 
the first vision, which I have translated word for word as fol- 
lows : — 

''On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the cus- 
tom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed 
myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the 
high hills of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in medi- 
tation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of 
the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the 
vanity of human Hfe; and, passing from one thought to an- 
other, 'Surely,' said I, 'man is but a shadow and life a dream.' 
Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit 
of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in 
the habit of a shepherd, with a musical instrument in his hand. 
As I looked upon him he applied it to his lips, and began to play 
upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought 
into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and 
altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They 
put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the 
departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, 
to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify 
them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted 
away in secret raptures. 

" I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt 
of a genius, and that several had been entertained with music 
who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had 
before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts, 
by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the pleas- 
ures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one aston- 
ished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand 
directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near 
with that reverence which is due to a superior nature; and as 
my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I 
had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled 
upon me with a look of compassion and affability that famil- 
iarized him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the 
fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He 
lifted me from the ground, and, taking me by the hand, 



194 JOSEPH ADDISON 

'Mirzah,' said he, 'I have heard thee in thy soliloquies; fol- 
low me.' 

*'He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and, 
placing me on the top of it, ' Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 
'and tell me what thou seest.' *I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, 
and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.' 'The valley 
that thou seest,' said he, 'is the vale of misery, and the tide of 
water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity.' 
'What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide I see rises out of a 
thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at 
the other?' 'What thou seest,' said he, 'is that portion of 
eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and 
reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation. 
Examine now,' said he, 'this sea that is thus bounded with 
darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.' 
'I see a bridge,' said I, 'standing in the midst of the tide.' 
'The bridge thou seest,' said he, 'is human Hfe; consider it 
attentively.' Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that 
it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several 
broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made 
up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the arches 
the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thou- 
sand arches; but that a great flood swept away the rest, and 
left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. 'But 
tell me further,' said he, 'what thou discoverest on it.' 

'"I see multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, 'and a 
black cloud hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more at- 
tentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through 
the bridge, into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and, 
upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable 
trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passen- 
gers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the 
tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were 
set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of 
people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them 
fell into them. They grew thinner towards the middle, but 
multiphed and lay closer together towards the end of the 
arches that were entire. 

"There were indeed some persons — but their number was 
very small — that continued a kind of hobbling march on 



THE SPECTATOR 195 

the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being 
quite tired and spent with so long a walk. 

"I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful 
structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. 
My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several drop- 
ping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catch- 
ing at everything that stood by them to save themselves. 
Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful 
posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell 
out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of 
bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them, 
but often, when they thought themselves within the reach of 
them, their footing failed, and down they sunk. In this con- 
fusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, 
and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, 
thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not seem 
to He in their way, and which they might have escaped, had 
they not been thus forced upon them. 

"The genius, seeing me indulge myself in this melancholy 
prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it. ' Take thine 
eyes off the bridge, ' said he, ' and tell me if thou yet seest anything 
thou dost not comprehend.' Upon looking up, 'What mean,' 
said I, ' those great flights of birds that are perpetually hover- 
ing about the bridge, and settling upon it from time to time? 
I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants; and among many 
other feathered creatures several little winged boys, that perch 
in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the 
genius, 'are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the 
like cares and passions that infest human life.' 

"I here fetched a deep sigh. 'Alas,' said I, 'man was made 
in vain! how is he given away to misery and mortahty! tor- 
tured in Hfe, and swallowed up in death!' The genius, being 
moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfort- 
able a prospect. 'Look no more,' said he, 'on man in the first 
stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity; but cast 
thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the sev- 
eral generations of mortals that fall into it.' I directed my 
sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius 
strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part 
of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) 



196 JOSEPH ADDISON 

I saw the valley opening at the further end, and spreading 
forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant 
running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal 
parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that 
I could discover nothing in it; but the other appeared to me a 
vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered 
with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand httle 
shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed 
in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing 
among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or rest- 
ing on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of 
singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instru- 
ments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delight- 
ful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly 
away to those happy seats; but the genius told me there was no 
passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw 
opening every moment upon the bridge. 'The islands,' said he, 
'that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the 
whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst 
see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore ; there 
are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discover- 
est, reaching further than thine eye or even thine imagina- 
tion can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men 
after death, who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue 
in which they excelled, are distributed among these several 
islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and 
degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are 
settled in them; every island is a paradise accommodated to 
its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirzah, habita- 
tions worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that 
gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death 
to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? 
Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity 
reserved for him,' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these 
happy islands. At length said I, ' Show me now, I beseech thee, 
the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover 
the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant.' The 
genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself 
to him a second time, but I found that he had left me; I then 
turned again to the vision which I had been so long contem- 



THE SPECTATOR 197 

plating, but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and 
the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of 
Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides 
of it.' 

The end of the first vision of Mirzah. 

No. 267.' Saturday, January 5, 1712 ^W^U^ 

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii. — Propert. '-"^' '^'^' , hr-i 

There is nothing in nature more irksome than general dis- 
courses, especially when they turn chiefly upon words. For 
this reason I shall waive the discussion of that point which was 
started some years since, whether Milton's Paradise Lost may 
be called an heroic poem. Those who will not give it that title 
may call it, if they please, a divine poem. It will be sufficient 
to its perfection, if it has in it all the beauties of the highest 
kind of poetry; and as for those who allege it is not an heroic 
poem, they advance no more to the diminution of it, than if 
they should say Adam is not ^Eneas, nor Eve Helen. 

I shall therefore examine it by the rules of epic poetry, and 
see whether it falls short of the Iliad or Mneid in the beauties 
which are essential to that kind of writing. The first thing to 
be considered in an epic poem is the fable, which is perfect or 
imperfect, according as the action which it relates is more 
or less so. This action should have three qualifications in it. 
First, it should be but one action; secondly, it should be an 
entire action; and thirdly, it should be a great action. To con- 
sider the action of the Iliad, Mneid, and Paradise Lost, in these 
three several lights. Homer, to preserve the unity of his action, 
hastens into the midst of things, as Horace has observed. Had 
he gone up to Leda's egg, or begun much later, even at the rape 
of Helen, or the investing of Troy, it is manifest that the story 
of the poem would have been a series of several actions. He 
therefore opens his poem with the discord of his princes, and 
artfully interweaves, in the several succeeding parts of it, an 
account of everything material which relates to them, and had 
passed before this fatal dissension. After the same manner 
iF^neas makes his first appearance in the Tyrrhene seas, and 
within sight of Italy, because the action proposed to be cele- 

* The first of eighteen papers on Paradise Lost. See page 207, below. 



198 JOSEPH ADDISON 

brated was that of his settling himself in Latium. But because 
it was necessary for the reader to know what had happened to 
him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding parts of his 
voyage, Virgil makes his hero relate it by way of episode in the 
second and third books of the ^neid; the contents of both 
which books come before those of the first book in the thread 
of the story, though, for preserving of this unity of action, they 
follow it in the disposition of the poem. Milton, in imitation 
of these two great poets, opens his Paradise Lost with an infer- 
nal council plotting the fall of man, which is the action he pro- 
posed to celebrate; and as for those great actions, the battle 
of the angels and the creation of the world (which preceded in 
point of time, and which, in my opinion, would have entirely 
destroyed the unity of his principal action, had he related them 
in the same order that they happened), he cast them into the 
fifth, sixth, and seventh books, by way of episode to this noble 
poem. 

Aristotle himself allows that Homer has nothing to boast of 
as to the unity of his fable, though at the same time that great 
critic and philosopher endeavors to palliate this imperfection 
in the Greek poet, by imputing it in some measure to the very 
nature of an epic poem. Some have been of opinion that the 
jEneid also labors in this particular, and has episodes which 
may be looked upon as excrescences rather than as parts of the 
action. On the contrary, the poem which we have now under 
our consideration hath no other episodes than such as natu- 
rally arise from the subject, and yet is filled with such a multi- 
tude of astonishing incidents, that it gives us at the same time 
a pleasure of the greatest variety, and of the greatest simplicity; 
uniform in its nature, though diversified in the execution. 

I must observe also that as Virgil, in the poem which was 
designed to celebrate the original of the Roman empire, has 
described the birth of its great rival, the Carthaginian com- 
monwealth, Milton, with the hke art, in his poem on the fall of 
man has related the fall of those angels who are his professed 
enemies. Besides the many other beauties in such an episode, 
its running parallel with the great action of the poem hinders it 
from breaking the unity so much as another episode would have 
done, that had not so great an affinity with the principal sub- 
ject. In short, this is the same kind of beauty which the critics 



THE SPECTATOR 199 

admire in The Spanish Friar or The Double Discovery,^ where 
the two different plots look like counterparts and copies of one 
another. 

The second qualification required in the action of an epic 
poem is that it should be an entireaction . An action is entire 
when it is complete in all its parts; or, as Aristotle describes it, 
when it consists of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Nothing 
should go before it, be intermixed with it, or follow after it 
that is not related to it; as, on. the contrary, no single step 
should be omitted in that just and regular process which it 
must be supposed to take from its original to its consumma- 
tion. Thus we see the anger of Achilles in its birth, its continu- 
ance, and effects; and ^Eneas's settlement in Italy, carried on 
through all the oppositions in his way to it both by sea and 
land. The action in Milton excels (I think) both the former in 
this particular; we see it contrived in hell, executed upon earth, 
and punished by Heaven. The parts of it are told in the most 
distinct manner, and grow out of one another in the most natu- 
ral order. 

The third qualification of an epic poem is its greatness. The 
anger of Achilles was of such consequence that it embroiled 
the kings of Greece, destroyed the heroes of Asia, and engaged 
all the gods in factions. The settlement of yEneas in Italy pro- 
duced the Caesars, and gave birth to the Roman empire. Mil- 
ton's subject was still greater than either of the former; it does 
not determine the fate of single persons or nations, but of a 
whole species. The united powers of hell are joined together 
for the destruction of mankind, which they effected in part, 
and would have completed, had not Omnipotence itself inter- 
posed. The principal actors are man in his greatest perfection, 
and woman in her highest beauty. Their enemies are the fallen 
angels; the Messiah their friend, and the Almighty their pro- 
tector. In short, everything that is great in the whole circle of 
being, whether within the verge of nature or out of it, has a 
proper part assigned it in this admirable poem. 

In poetry, as in architecture, not only the whole, but the 
principal members, and every part of them, should be great. 
I will not presume to say that the book of games in the Mneid, 
or that in the Iliad^ are not of this nature, nor to reprehend 

» By Dryden. 



200 JOSEPH ADDISON 

Virgil's simile of a top, and many others of the same kind in the 
Iliad, as liable to any censure in this particular; but I think 
we may say, without derogating from those wonderful per- 
formances, that there is an indisputable and unquestioned 
magnificence in every part of Paradise Lost, and indeed a much 
greater than could have been formed upon any pagan system. 
But Aristotle, by the greatness of the action, does not only 
mean that it should be great in its nature, but also in its dura- 
tion, or in other words, that it should have a due length in it, 
as well as what we properly call greatness. The just measure 
of this kind of magnitude he explains by the following simili- 
tude. An animal no bigger than a mite cannot appear perfect 
to the eye, because the sight takes it in at once, and has only 
a confused idea of the whole, and not a distinct idea of all its 
parts; if on the contrary you should suppose an animal of ten 
thousand furlongs in length, the eye would be so filled with a 
single part of it that it could not give the mind an idea of the 
whole. What these animals are to the eye, a very short or a 
very long action would be to the memory. The first would be, 
as it were, lost and swallowed up by it, and the other difficult 
to be contained in it. Homer and Virgil have shown their prin- 
cipal art in this particular; the action of the Iliad, and that of 
the Mneid, were in themselves exceeding short, but are so 
beautifully extended and diversified by the invention of epi- 
sodes, and the machinery of gods, with the like poetical orna- 
ments, that they make up an agreeable story, sufficient to 
employ the memory without overcharging it. Milton's action 
is enriched with such variety of circumstances, that I have 
taken as much pleasure in reading the contents of his books as 
in the best invented story I ever met with. It is possible that 
the traditions on which the Iliad and Mneid were built had 
more circumstances in them than the history of the fall of man, 
as it is related in Scripture. Besides, it was easier for Homer 
and Virgil to dash the truth with fiction, as they were in no 
danger of offending the rehgion of their country by it. But as 
for Milton, he had not only a very few circumstances upon 
which to raise his poem, but was also obliged to proceed with 
the greatest caution in everything that he added out of his 
own invention. And indeed, notwithstanding all the restraints 
he was under, he has filled his story with so many surprising 



THE SPECTATOR 201 

incidents, which bear so close an analogy with what is dehvered 
in Holy Writ, that it is capable of pleasing the most dehcate 
reader, without giving offense to the most scrupulous. 

The modern critics have collected, from several hints in the 
Iliad and yEneid, the space of time which is taken up by the 
action of each of those poems; but as a great part of Milton's 
story was transacted in regions that lie out of the reach of the 
sun and the sphere of day, it is impossible to gratify the reader 
with such a calculation, which indeed would be more curious 
than instructive; none of the critics, either ancient or modern, 
having laid down rules to circumscribe the action of an epic 
poem with any determined number of years, days, or hours. 
But of this more particular hereafter. 

No. 323. Tuesday, March ii, 171 2 

Modo vir, modo femina. — Vieg. 

The Journal ^ with which I presented my reader on Tuesday 
last, has brought me in several letters with accounts of many 
private Kves cast into that form. I have the Rake's Journal, the 
Sot's Journal, the Whoremaster's Journal, and among several 
others a very curious piece, entitled The Journal of a Mohock. 
By these instances I find that the intention of my last Tues- 
day's paper has been mistaken by many of my readers. I did 
not design so much to expose vice as idleness, and aimed at 
those persons who pass away their time rather in trifles and 
impertinence than in crimes and immorahties. Offenses of 
this later kind are not to be dallied with, or treated in so 
ludicrous a manner. In short, my journal only holds up folly 
to the light, and shows the disagreeableness of such actions as 
are indifferent in themselves, and blamable only as they pro- 
ceed from creatures endowed with reason. 

My following correspondent, who calls herself Clarinda, is 
such a joumaHst as I require: she seems by her letter to be 
placed in a modish state of indifference between vice and 
virtue, and to be susceptible of either, were there proper pains 
taken with her. Had her journal been filled with gallantries, or 
such occurrences as had shown her wholly divested of her 
natural innocence, notwithstanding it might have been more 

» The "journal of a citizen." 



202 JOSEPH ADDISON 

pleasing to the generality of readers, I should not have pub- 
lished it; but as it is only the picture of a life filled with a fash- 
ionable kind of gaiety and laziness, I shall set down five days 
of it, as I have received it from the hand of my correspondent . 

Dear Mr. Spectator, — You having set your readers an exercise in 
one of your last week's papers, I have performed mine according to your 
orders, and herewith send it you enclosed. You must know, Mr. Specta- 
tor, that I am a maiden lady of a good fortune, who have had several 
matches offered me for these ten years last past, and have at present warm 
applications made to me by a very pretty fellow. As I am at my own dis- 
posal, I come up to town every winter, and pass my time in it after the 
manner you will find in the following journal, which I began to write upon 
the very day after your Spectator upon that subject. 

Tuesday night. Could not go to sleep till one in the morning for think- 
ing of my journal. 

Wednesday. From Eight till Ten. Drank two dishes of chocolate in 
bed, and fell asleep after them. 

From Ten to Eleven. Eat a sljce of bread and butter, drank a dish of 
bohea, read the Spectator. 

From Eleven to One. At my toilette ; tried a new head. Gave orders for 
Veny to be combed and washed. Mem. I look best in blue. 

From One till half an hour after Two. Drove to the Change. Cheapened 
a couple of fans. 

Till Four. At dinner. Mem. Mr. Froth passed by in his new liveries. 

From Four to Six. Dressed, paid a visit to old Lady Blithe and her 
sister, having before heard they were gone out of town that day. 

From Six to Eleven. At basset. Mem. Never set again upon the ace of 
diamonds. 

Thursday. From Eleven at night to Eight in the morning. Dreamed that 
I punted to Mr. Froth. 

From Eight to Ten. Chocolate. Read two acts in Aiirengzehe a-bed. 

From Ten to Eleven. Tea-table. Sent to borrow Lady Faddle's Cupid 
for Veny. Read the play-bills. Received a letter from Mr. Froth. Mem. 
Locked it up in my strong box. 

Rest of the morning. Fontange, the tire-woman, her account of my 
Lady Blithe's wash. Broke a tooth in my little tortoise-shell comb. Sent 
Frank to know how my Lady Hectic rested after her monkey's leaping out 
at window. Looked pale. Fontange tells me my glass is not true. Dressed 
by Three. 

From Three to Four. Dinner cold before I sat down. 

From Four to Eleven. Saw company. Mr. Froth's opinion of Milton. 
His account of the Mohocks. His fancy for a pin-cushion. Picture in the 
lid of his snuff-box. Old Lady Faddle promises me her woman to cut my 
hair. Lost five guineas at crimp. 

Twelve o'clock at night. Went to bed. 



THE SPECTATOR 203 

Friday. Eight in the morning. A-bed. Read over all Mr. Froth's letters. 
Cupid and Veny. 

Ten o'clock. Stayed within all day, not at home. 

From Ten to Twelve. In conference with my mantuamaker. Sorted a 
suit of ribands. Broke my blue china cup. 

From Twelve to One. Shut myself up in my chamber, practiced Lady 
Betty Modely's skuttle. 

One in the afternoon. Called for my flowered handkerchief. Worked half 
a violet leaf in it. Eyes_ached and head out of order. Threw by my work, 
and read over the remaining part of Aurengzebe. 

From Three to Four. Dined. 

From Four to Twelve. Changed my mind, dressed, went abroad, and 
played at crimp till midnight. Found Mrs. Spitely at home. Conversa- 
tion: Mrs. Brillant's necklace false stones. Old Lady Loveday going to be 
married to a young fellow that is not worth a groat. Miss Prue gone into 
the country. Tom Townley has red hair. Mem. Mrs. Spitely whispered 
in my ear that she had something to tell me about Mr. Froth ; I am sure 
it is not true. 

Between Twelve and One. Dreamed that Mr. Froth lay at my feet, and 
called me Indamora. 

Saturday. Rose at eight o'clock in the morning. Sat down to my 
toilette. 

From Eight to Nine. Shifted a patch for half an hour before I could 
determine it. Fixed it above my left eyebrow. 

From Nine to Twelve. Drank my tea, and dressed. 

From Twelve to Two. At chapel. A great deal of good company. Mem. 
The third air in the new opera. Lady Blithe dressed frightfully. 

From Three to Four. Dined. Mrs. Kitty called upon me to go to the 
opera before I was risen from table. 

From dinner to Six. Drank tea. Turned off a footman for being rude 
to Veny. 

Six o'clock. Went to the opera. I did not see Mr. Froth till the begin- 
ning of the second act. Mr. Froth talked to a gentleman in a black wig. 
Bowed to a lady in the front box. Mr. Froth and his friend clapped 
NicoHni in the third act. Mr. Froth cried out " Ancora.'' Mr. Froth led 
me to my chair. I think he squeezed my hand. 

Eleven at night. Went to bed. Melancholy dreams. Methought Nico- 
lini said he was Mr. Froth. 

Sunday. Indisposed. 

Monday. Eight 0^ clock. Waked by Miss Kitty. Aurengzebe lay upon 
the chair by me. Kitty repeated without book the eight best lines in the 
play. Went in our mobs to the dumb man, according to appointment. 
Told me that my lover's name began with a G. Mem. The conjurer was 
within a letter of Mr. Froth's name, etc. 

^ ' Upon looking back into this my journal, I find that I am at a loss to 



204 JOSEPH ADDISON 

know whether I pass my time well or ill; and indeed never thought of 
considering how I did it, before I perused your speculation upon that sub- 
ject. I scarce find a single action in these five days that I can thoroughly 
approve of, except the working upon the violet leaf, which I am resolved 
to finish the first day I am at leisure. As for Mr. Froth and Veny, I did 
not think they took up so much of my time and thoughts as I find they 
do upon my journal. The latter of them I will turn off if you insist upon 
it; and if Mr. Froth does not bring matters to a conclusion very suddenly, 
I will not let my life run away in a dream. 

Your humble servant, 

Clarinda. 

To resume one of the morals of my first paper, and to con- 
firm Clarinda in her good incUnations, I would have her con- 
sider what a pretty figure she would make among posterity, 
were the history of her whole life published Uke these five days 
of it. . . . 

No. 409. Thursday, June 19, 1712 

MuscEO contingere cuncta lepore. — Lucr. 

Gratian very often recommends fine taste as the utmost per- 
fection of an accomplished man. As this word arises very often 
in conversation, I shall endeavor to give some account of it, 
and to lay down rules how we may know whether we are pos- 
sessed of it, and how we may acquire that fine taste of writing 
which is so much talked of among the polite world. 

Most languages make use of this metaphor, to express that 
faculty of mind which distinguishes all the most concealed 
faults and nicest perfections in writing. We may be sure that 
this metaphor would not have been so general in all tongues, 
had there not been a very great conformity between that men- 
tal taste, which is the subject of this paper, and that sensitive 
taste which gives us a relish of every different flavor that affects 
the palate. Accordingly we find there are as many degrees of 
refinement in the intellectual faculty as in the sense which is 
marked out by this common denomination. 

I knew a person who possessed the one in so great a per- 
fection, that, after having tasted ten different kinds of tea, 
he would distinguish, without seeing the color of it, the par- 
ticular sort which was offered him; and not only so, but any 
two sorts of them that were mixed together in an equal pro- 
portion. Nay, he has carried the experiment so far as, upon 



THE SPECTATOR 205 

tasting the composition of three different sorts, to name the 
parcels from whence the three several ingredients were taken. 
A man of a fine taste in writing will discern, after the same 
manner, not only the general beauties and imperfections of an 
author, but discover the several ways of thinking and express- 
ing himself which diversify him from all other authors, with 
the several foreign infusions of thought and language, and the 
particular authors from whom they were borrowed. 

After having thus far explained what is generally meant by 
a fine taste in writing, and shown the propriety of the meta- 
phor which is used on this occasion, I think I may define it to 
be ''that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an 
author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike." If 
a man would know whether he is possessed of this faculty, I 
would have him read over the celebrated works of antiquity, 
which have stood the test of so many different ages and coun- 
tries, or those works among the moderns which have the sanc- 
tion of the politer part of our contemporaries. If, upon the 
perusal of such writings, he does not find himself delighted in 
an extraordinary manner, or if, upon reading the admired 
passages in such authors, he finds a coldness and indifference 
in his thoughts, he ought to conclude, not — as is too usual 
among tasteless readers — that the author wants those per- 
fections which have been admired in him, but that he himself 
wan ts the faculty of dis coviering them. 

He should, in the second place, be very careful to, observe 
whether he tastes the distinguishing perfections, or — if I may 
be allowed to call them so — the specific qualities of the author 
whom he peruses ; whether he is particularly pleased with Li vy 
for his manner of telling a story, with Sallust for his entering 
into those internal principles of action which arise from the 
characters and manners of the persons he describes, or with 
Tacitus for displaying those outward motives of safety and 
interest which gave birth to the whole series of transactions 
which he relates. 

He may Hkewise consider how differently he is affected by 
the same thought which presents itself in a great writer, from 
what he is when he finds it delivered by a person of an ordinary 
genius; for there is as much difference in apprehending a 
thought clothed in Cicero's language, and that of a common 



2o6 JOSEPH ADDISON 

author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper or by the 
light of the sun. 

It is very difficult to lay down rules for the acquirement of 
such a taste as that I am here speaking of. The faculty must 
in some degree be born with us; and it very often happens that 
those who have other qualities in perfection are wholly void of 
this. One of the most eminent mathematicians of the age has 
assured me that the greatest pleasure he took in reading Virgil 
was in examining ^neas's voyage by the map; as I question 
not but many a modern compiler of history would be dehghted 
with little more in that divine author than the bare matters of 
fact. 

But, notwithstanding this faculty must in some measure be 
born in us, there are several methods for cultivating and im- 
proving it, and without which it will be very uncertain and of 
little use to the person that possesses it. The most natural 
method for this purpose is to be conversant among the writings 
of the most polite authors. A man who has any relish for fine 
writing either discovers new beauties, or receives stronger 
impressions, from the masterly strokes of a great author, every 
time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself 
into the same manner of speaking and thinking. 

Conversation with men of a polite genius is another method 
for improving our natural taste. It is impossible for a man of 
the greatest parts to consider anything in its whole extent and 
in all its variety of lights. Every man, besides those general 
observations which are to be made upon an author, forms 
several reflections that are pecuHar to his own manner of 
thinking; so that conversation will naturally furnish us with 
hints which we did not attend to, and make us enjoy other 
men's parts and reflections, as well as our own. This is the 
best reason I can give for the observation which several have 
made, that men of great genius in the same way of writing sel- 
dom rise up singly, but at certain periods of time appear 
together, and in a body; as they did at Rome in the reign of 
Augustus, and in Greece about the age of Socrates. I cannot 
think that Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine, 
Bruyere, Bossuet, or the Daciers, would have written so well 
as they have done, had they not been friends and contempo- 
raries. 



THE SPECTATOR 207 

It is likewise necessary for a man who would form to himself 
a finished taste of good writing, to be well versed in the works 
of the best critics, both ancient and modern. I must confess 
that I could wish there were authors of this kind, who, besides 
the mechanical rules, which a man of very little taste may dis- 
course upon, would enter into the very spirit and soul of fine 
writing, and show us the several sources of that pleasure which 
rises in the mind upon the perusal of a noble work. Thus, 
although in poetry it be absolutely necessary that the unities 
of time, place, and action, should be thoroughly explained 
and understood, there is still something more essential to the 
art, something that elevates and astonishes the fancy, and 
gives a greatness of mind to the reader, which few of the critics 
besides Longinus have considered. 

Our general taste in England is for epigram, turns of wit, and 
forced conceits, which have no manner of influence either for 
the bettering or enlarging the mind of him who reads them, 
and have been carefully avoided by the greatest writers, both 
among the ancients and moderns. I have endeavored, in sev- 
eral of my speculations, to banish this Gothic taste which has 
taken possession among us. I entertained the town for a week 
together with an essay upon wit, in which I endeavored to 
detect several of those false kinds which have been admired 
in the different ages of the world, and at the same time to show 
wherein the nature of true wit consists. I afterward gave an 
instance of the great force which lies in a natural simplicity 
of thought to affect the mind of the reader, from such vulgar 
pieces as have little else besides this single qualification to 
recommend them. I have likewise examined the works of the 
greatest poet which our nation, or perhaps any other, has pro- 
duced, and particularized most of those rational and manly 
beauties which give a value to that divine work. I shall next 
Saturday enter upon an essay on "The Pleasures of the 
Imagination," which, though it shall consider that subject at 
large, will perhaps suggest to the reader what it is that gives 
a beauty to many passages of the finest writers both in prose 
and verse. As an undertaking of this nature is entirely new, I 
question not but it will be received with candor. 



2o8 JOSEPH ADDISON 

No. 419.^ Tuesday, July i, 1712 

Mentis gratissimus error. — Hor. 

There is a kind of writing wherein the poet quite loses sight 
of nature, and entertains his reader's imagination with the 
characters and actions of such persons as have, many of them, 
no existence but what he bestows on them. Such are fairies, 
witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits. This Mr. 
Dryden calls "the fairy way of writing," which is indeed more 
difficult than any other that depends on the poet's fancy, 
because he has no pattern to follow in it, and must work alto- 
gether out of his own invention. 

There is a very odd turn of thought required for this sort of 
writing, and it is impossible for a poet to succeed in it who has 
not a particular cast of fancy, and an imagination naturally 
fruitful and superstitious. Besides this, he ought to be very 
well versed in legends and fables, antiquated romances, and 
the traditions of nurses and old women, that he may fall in 
with our natural prejudices, and humor those notions which 
we have imbibed in our infancy. For otherwise he will be apt 
to make his fairies talk like people of his own species, and not 
like other sets of beings, who converse with different objects 
and think in a different manner from that of mankind. . . . 
I do not say, with Mr. Bayes in The Rehearsal, that spirits must 
not be confined to speak sense, but it is certain their sense 
ought to be a Httle discolored, that it may seem particular, and 
proper to the person and condition of the speaker. 

These descriptions raise a pleasing kind of horror in the mind 
of the reader, and amuse his imagination with the strange- 
ness and novelty of the persons who are represented in them. 
They bring up into our memory the stories we have heard in 
our childhood, and favor those secret terrors and apprehen- 
sions to which the mind of man is naturally subject. We are 
pleased with surveying the different habits and behaviors of 
foreign countries; how much more must we be delighted and 
surprised when we are led, as it were, into a new creation, and 
see the persons and manners of another species! Men of cold 
fancies and philosophical dispositions object to this kind of 
poetry, that it has not probability enough to affect the imagi- 

1 The ninth of the eleven papers on "The Pleasures of the Imagination." 



THE SPECTATOR 209 

nation. But to this it may be answered that we are sure, in 
general, there are many intellectual beings in the world besides 
ourselves, and several species of spirits, who are subject to 
different laws and economies from those of mankind. When 
we see, therefore, any of these represented naturally, we can- 
not look upon the representation as altogether impossible; nay, 
many are prepossessed with such false opinions as dispose them 
to believe these particular delusions; at least we have all heard 
so many pleasing relations in favor of them, that we do not 
care for seeing through the falsehood, and willingly give our- 
selves up to so agreeable an imposture. 

The ancients have not much of this poetry among them; 
for, indeed, almost the whole substance of it owes its original 
to the darkness and superstition of later ages, when pious 
frauds were made use of to amuse mankind, and frighten them 
into a sense of their duty. Our forefathers looked upon nature 
with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlight- 
ened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish them- 
selves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, 
and enchantments. There was not a village in England that 
had not a ghost in it; the churchyards were all haunted; every 
large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there 
was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. 

Among all the poets of this kind our English are much the 
best, by what I have yet seen; whether it be that we abound 
with more stories of this nature, or that the genius of our coun- 
try is fitter for this sort of poetry. For the English are naturally 
fanciful, and very often disposed, by that gloominess and mel- 
ancholy of temper which is so frequent in our nation, to many 
wild notions and visions to which others are not so liable. 
Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all 
o_thers. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so 
great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak 
superstitious part of his reader's imagination, and made him 
capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him 
besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so 
wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, 
witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot for- 
bear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which 
to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in 



210 JOSEPH ADDISON 

the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act 
as he has represented them. 

There is another sort of imaginary beings that we some- 
times meet with among the poets, when the author represents 
any passion, appetite, virtue, or vice under a visible shape, 
and makes it a person or an actor in his poem. Of this nature 
are the descriptions of Hunger and Envy in Ovid, of Fame in 
Virgil, and of Sin and Death in Milton. We find a whole crea- 
tion of the like shadowy persons in Spenser, who had an 
admirable talent in representations of this kind. I have dis- 
coursed of these emblematical persons in former papers, and 
shall therefore only mention them in this place. 

Thus we see how many ways poetry addresses itself to the 
imagination, as it has not only the whole circle of nature for its 
province, but makes new worlds of its own, shows us persons 
who are not to be found in being, and represents even the fac- 
ulties of the soul, with the several virtues and vices, in a sen- 
sible shape and character. 



/ 

/ 



JOHN DENNIS - -'^-a v--^^^-^ 

ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF 
SHAKESPEARE 

1712 

[The following is from the first of three letters written by Dennis in 
February, 171 1, in connection with a new version he had made of Shake- 
speare's Coriolanus (called The Invader of his Country). The letters were 
published in 171 2, under the title An Essay on the Genius, etc., together 
with two other letters attacking some of Addison's papers in the Spec- 
tator. The main theme of the letters on Shakespeare is his want of learn- 
ing; to the modern student a matter of especial interest is Dennis's dis- 
cussion of the doctrine of poetic justice. Addison attacked this doctrine 
in No. 40 of the Spectator; see the passage on p. 174 above.] 

. . . Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the 
world e'er saw for the tragic stage. Though he lay under greater 
disadvantages than any of his successors, yet had he greater 
and more genuine beauties than the best and greatest of them. 
And what makes the brightest glory of his character, those 
beauties were entirely his own, and owing to the force of his 
own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his education, 
and to the age that he lived in. One may say of him as they 
did of Homer, that he had none to imitate, and is himself 
inimitable. His imaginations were often as just as they were 
bold and strong. He had a natural discretion which never 
could have been taught him, and his judgment was strong and 
penetrating. He seems to have wanted nothing but time and 
leisure for thought, to have found out those rules of which he 
appears so ignorant. His characters are always drawn justly, 
exactly, graphically, except where he failed by not knowing 
history or the poetical art. He has for the most part more 
fairly distinguished them than any of his successors have done, 
who have falsified them or confounded them by making love 
the predominant quality in all. He had so fine a talent for 
touching the passions, and they are so lively in him, and so 
truly in nature, that they often touch us more without their 
due preparations than those of other tragic poets who have all 



212 JOHN DENNIS 

the beauty of design and all the advantage of incidents. His 
master passion was terror, which he has often moved so power- 
fully and so wonderfully that we may justly conclude that, 
if he had had the advantage of art and learning, he would have 
surpassed the very best and strongest of the ancients. His 
paintings are often so beautiful and so lively, so graceful and 
so powerful, especially where he uses them in order to move 
terror, that there is nothing perhaps more accomplished in our 
English poetry. His sentiments for the most part, in his best 
tragedies, are noble, generous, easy, and natural, and adapted 
to the persons who use them. His expression is in many places 
good and pure after a hundred years; simple though elevated, 
graceful though bold, and easy though strong. He seems to 
have been the very original of our English tragical harmony, 
— that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by 
dissyllable and trisyllable terminations. For that diversity 
distinguishes it from heroic harmony, and, bringing it nearer 
to common use, makes it more proper to gain attention, and 
more fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when 
we are writing prose; we make such verse in common conversa- 
tion. 

/If Shakespeare had these great qualities by nature, what 
would he not have been if he had joined to so happy a genius 
learning and the poetical art? For want of the latter, our 
author has sometimes made gross mistakes in the characters 
which he has drawn from history, against the equality and con- 
veniency of manners of his dramatical persons. Witness Mene- 
nius in the following tragedy, whom he has made an errant 
buffoon, which is a great absurdity. For he might as well have 
imagined a grave majestic jack-pudding, as a buffoon in a 
Roman senator. Aufidius, the general of the Volscians, is 
shown a base and a profligate villain. He has offended against 
the equahty of the manners even in his hero himself. For 
Coriolanus, who in the first part of the tragedy is shown so 
open, so frank, so violent, and so magnanimous, is represented 
in the latter part by Aufidius — which is contradicted by no 
one — a flattering, fawning, cringing, insinuating traitor. 

For want of this poetical art, Shakespeare has introduced 
things into his tragedies which are against the dignity of that 
noble poem, as the rabble in Julius Ccesar and that in Corio- 



THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE 213 

laniis; though that in Coriolanus offends not only against the 
dignity of tragedy, but against the truth of history Hkewise, 
and the customs of ancient Rome, and the majesty of the 
Roman people, as we shall have occasion to show anon. 

For want of this art, he has made his incidents less moving, 
less surprising, and less wonderful. He has been so far from 
seeking those fine occasions to move with which an action fur- 
nished according to art would have furnished him, that he seems 
rather to have industriously avoided them. He makes Corio- 
lanus, upon his sentence of banishment, take his leave of his 
wife and his mother out of sight of the audience, and so has pur- 
posely, as it were, avoided a great occasion to move. 

If we are willing to allow that Shakespeare, by sticking to 
the bare events of history, has moved more than any of his 
successors, yet his just admirers must confess that if he had 
had the poetical art he would have moved ten times more. 
For 't is impossible that by a bare historical play he could 
move so much as he would have done by a fable. 

We find that a romance entertains the generality of mankind 
with more satisfaction than history, if they read only to be 
entertained; but if they read history through pride or ambi- 
tion, they bring their passions along with them, and that alters 
the case. Nothing is more plain than that even in an historical 
relation some parts of it, and some events, please more than 
others. And therefore a man of judgment, who sees why they 
do so, may, in forming a fable and disposing an action, please 
more than an historian can do. For the just fiction of a fable 
moves us more than an historical relation can do, for the two 
following reasons. First, by reason of the communication and 
mutual dependence of its parts. For if passion springs from 
motion, then the obstruction of that motion or a counter 
motion must obstruct and check the passion; and therefore 
an historian, and a writer of historical plays, passing from 
events of one nature to events of another nature without a 
due preparation, must of necessity stifle and confound one 
passion by another. The second reason why the fiction of a 
i" :' \i pleases us more than an historical relation can do, is, be- 
cai! e in an historical relation we seldom are acquainted with 
tilt true causes of events, whereas in a feigned action which 
is daly constituted — that is, which has a just beginning — 



214 JOHN DENNIS 

those causes always appear. For 't is observable that, both, in 
a poetical fiction and an historical relation, those events are 
the most entertaining, the most surprising, and the most won- 
derful, in which Providence most plainly appears. And 'tis 
for this reason that the author of a just fable must please 
more than the writer of an historical relation. The good 
must never fail to prosper, and the bad must always be pun- 
ished; otherwise the incidents, and particularly the cata- 
strophe which is the grand incident, are liable to be imputed 
rather to chance than to almighty conduct and to sovereign jus- 
tice. The want of this impartial distribution of justice makes 
the Coriolanus of Shakespeare to be without moral. 'T is true, 
indeed, Coriolanus is killed by those foreign enemies with 
whom he had openly sided against his country, which seems 
to be an event worthy of Providence, and would look as if it 
were contrived by infinite wisdom, and executed by supreme 
justice, to make Coriolanus a dreadful example to all who lead 
on foreign enemies to the invasion of their native country, if 
there were not something in the fate of the other characters 
which gives occasion to doubt of it, and which suggests to the 
skeptical reader that this might happen by accident. For 
Aufidius, the principal murderer of Coriolanus, who in cold 
blood gets him assassinated by ruffians, instead of leaving him 
to the law of the country and the justice of the Volscian senate, 
and who commits so black a crime not by any erroneous zeal 
or a mistaken public spirit, but through jealousy, envy, and 
inveterate malice, — this assassinator not only survives, and 
survives unpunished, but seems to be rewarded for so detest- 
able an action by engrossing all those honors to himself which 
Coriolanus before had shared with him. . . . 

But indeed Shakespeare has been wanting in the exact dis- 
tribution of poetical justice not only in his Coriolanus, but in 
most of his best tragedies, in which the guilty and the inno- 
cent perish promiscuously; as Duncan and Banquo in Macbeth, 
as Hkewise Lady Macduff and her children; Desdemona in 
Othello; Cordelia, Kent, and King Lear, in the tragedy that 
bears his name; Brutus and Portia in Julius Ccesar; and young 
Hamlet in the tragedy of Hamlet. For though it may be said 
in defense of the last, that Hamlet had a design to kill his unci 
who then reigned, yet this is justified by no less than a cA\ 



REMARKS UPON CATO 215 

from heaven, and raising up one from the dead to urge him to 
it. The good and the bad, then, perishing promiscuously in the 
best of Shakespeare's tragedies, there can be either none or 
very weak instruction in them; for such promiscuous events 
call the government of Providence into question, and by 
skeptics and libertines are resolved into chance. I humbly con- 
ceive, therefore, that this want of dramatical justice in the 
tragedy of Coriolanus gave occasion for a just alteration, and 
that I was obliged to sacrifice to that justice Aufidius and the 
tribunes, as well as Coriolanus. 

Thus have we endeavored to show that, for want of the 
poetical art, Shakespeare lay under very great disadvantages. 
At the same time we must own to his honor that he has often 
performed wonders without it, in spite of the judgment of so 
great a man as Horace : — 

Natura fieret laudabile carmen, an arte, 
Qucesitum est : ego nee studium sine divite vena, ■ 
Nee rude quid prosit video ingenium; alterius sic 
Altera poscit opem res, et conjurat amice} 

But from this very judgment of Horace we may justly con- 
clude that Shakespeare would have wonderfully surpassed 
himself, if art had been joined to nature. . . . 



REMARKS UPON CATO 

1713 

[The pamphlet from which the following extract is taken is one of 
several connected with a prolonged quarrel involving Addison, Dennis, 
and others, which began in 1711. Addison's Cato was produced in April, 
1 7 13 (see the account given by Colley Gibber, page 271 below). It was char- 
acterized in particular by the unusual effort to carry out the old rule of 
"unity of place"; and Dennis seized upon the resulting improbabilities 
as an opportunity to vent his rage, both personal and critical, upon the 
dramatist. The passages here reproduced are also quoted, with com- 
ments, in Dr. Johnson's Life of Addison.] 

. . . Upon the departure of Portius, Sempronius makes but 
one soliloquy, and immediately in comes Syphax, and then the 

' "Inquiry'has been made whether the praiseworthy poem is the product of nature or 
art; for my part, I do not see what advantage there is either in unpolished talent or in 
study without a rich natural vein, — so the one demands the aid of the other, and enters 
into friendly conspiracy with it." 



2i6 JOHN DENNIS 

two politicians are at it immediately. They lay their heads 
together, with their snuff-boxes in their hands, as Mr. Bayes 
has it, and feague it away. But, in the midst of that wise scene, 
Syphax seems to give a seasonable caution to Sempronius: — 

But is it true, Sempronius, that your senate 

Is called together? Gods! thou must be cautious; 

Cato has piercing eyes. 

There is a great deal of caution shown indeed, in meeting 
in a governor's own hall to carry on their plot against him. 
Whatever opinion they have of his eyes, I suppose they have 
none of his ears, or they would never have talked at this fooUsh 
rate so near. 

Gods! thou must be cautious! 

Oh yes! very cautious; for if Cato should overhear you, and 
turn you off for politicians, Ctesar would never take you; no, 
Caesar would never take you. 

When Cato (Act II) turns the senators out of the hall, 
upon pretence of acquainting Juba with the result of their 
debates, he appears to me to do a thing which is neither reason- 
able nor civil. Juba might certainly have better been made 
acquainted with the result of that debate in some private 
apartment of the place. But the poet was driven upon this 
absurdity to make way for another; and that is, to give Juba 
an opportunity to demand Marcia of her father. But the quar- 
rel and rage of Juba and Syphax, in the same act; the invect- 
ives of Syphax against the Romans and Cato ; the advice that 
he gives Juba, in her father's hall, to bear away Marcia by 
force ; and his brutal and clamorous rage upon his refusal, and 
at a time when Cato was scarcely out of sight, and perhaps 
not out of hearing, — at least some of his guards or domestics 
must necessarily be supposed to be within hearing, — is a 
thing that is so far from being probable that it is hardly 
possible. 

Sempronius, in the second act, comes back once more in the 
same morning to the governor's hall, to carry on the con- 
spiracy with Syphax against the governor, his country, and his 
family; which is so stupid that it is below the wisdom of the 

's, the Mac's, and the Teague's; even Eustace Com- 

mins himself would never have gone to Justice Hall, to have 



REMARKS UPON CATO 217 

conspired against the government. If ofi&cers at Portsmouth 
should lay their heads together, in order to the carrying off 

J G 's ^ niece or daughter, would they meet in J 

G 's hall to carry on that conspiracy? There would be no 

necessity for their meeting there, at least till they came to the 
execution of their plot, because there would be other places 
to meet in. There would be no probability that they should 
meet there, because there would be places more private and 
more commodious. Now there ought to be nothing in a tragi- 
cal action but what is necessary or probable. 

But treason is not the only thing that is carried on in this 
hall. That, and love, and philosophy take their turns in it, 
without any manner of necessity or probability occasioned by 
the action, as duly and regularly, without interrupting one 
another, as if there were a triple league between them, and a 
mutual agreement that each should give place to and make way 
for the other, in a due and orderly succession. 

We now come to the third act. Sempronius, in this act, 
comes into the governor's hall, with the leaders of the mutiny; 
but, as soon as Cato is gone, Sempronius, who but just before 
had acted hke an unparalleled knave, discovers himself, Uke 
an egregious fool, to be an accompHce in the conspiracy. 

Know, villains, when such paltry slaves presume 
To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds, 
They're thrown neglected by; but, if it fails, 
They're sure to die like dogs, as you shall do. 
Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth 
To sudden death. 

'Tis true, indeed, the second leader says, there are none 
there but friends; but is that possible at such a juncture? Can 
a parcel of rogues attempt to assassinate the governor of a 
town of war, in his own house, in mid-day? and, after they are 
discovered and defeated, can there be none near them but 
friends? Is it not plain from these words of Sempronius, — 

Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth 
To sudden death, — 

and from the entrance of the guards upon the word of com- 
mand, that those guards were within earshot? Behold Sem- 

1 That is, Sir John Gibson, Lieutenant Governor of Portsmouth. 



2i8 JOHN DENNIS 

pronius then palpably discovered. How comes it to pass, then, 
that instead of being hanged up with the rest, he remains 
secure in the governor's hall, and there carries on his conspiracy 
against the government, the third time in the same day, with 
his old comrade Syphax, who enters at the same time that the 
guards are carrying away the leaders, big with the news of the 
defeat of Sempronius? — though where he had his intelligence 
so soon is difficult to imagine. . . . 

But now let us lay before the reader that part of the scenery 
of the fourth act which may show the absurdities which the au- 
thor has run into through the indiscreet observance of the unity 
of place. I do not remember that Aristotle has said anything 
expressly concerning the unity of place. 'Tis true, implicitly 
he has said enough in the rules which he has laid down for the 
chorus. For, by making the chorus an essential part of tra- 
gedy, and by bringing it on the stage immediately after the open- 
ing of the scene, and retaining it till the very catastrophe, he 
has so determined and fixed the place of action that it was im- 
possible for an author on the Grecian stage to break through 
that unity. I am of opinion that if a modern tragic poet can 
preserve the unity of place without destroying the probability 
of the incidents, 't is always best for him to do it ; because, by the 
preserving of that unity, as we have taken notice above, he adds 
grace and clearness and comeliness to the representation. But 
since there are no express rules about it, and we are under no 
compulsion to keep it, since we have no chorus as the Grecian 
poet had, if it cannot be preserved without rendering the 
greater part of the incidents unreasonable and absurd, and per- 
haps sometimes monstrous, 'tis certainly better to break it. . . . 

But now let us sum up all these absurdities together. Sem- 
pronius goes at noonday, in Juba's clothes and with Juba's 
guards, to Cato's palace, in order to pass for Juba, in a place 
where they were both so very well known ; he meets Juba there, 
and resolves to murder him with his own guards. Upon the 
guards appearing a little bashful, he threatens them : — • 

Hah! Dastards, do you tremble! 

Or act like men, or, by yon azure heaven — 

But the guards still remaining restive, Sempronius himself 
attacks Juba, while each of the guards is representing Mr. 



REMARKS UPON CATO 219 

Spectator's sign of the Gaper, awed, it seems, and terrified by 
Sempronius's threats. Juba kills Sempronius, and takes his own 
army prisoners, and carries them in triumph away to Cato. 
Now I would fain know if any part of Mr. Bayes's tragedy ' is 
so full of absurdity as this? 

Upon hearing the clash of swords, Lucia and Marcia come in. 
The question is, why no men come in upon hearing the noise of 
swords in the governor's hall? Where was the governor him- 
self? Where were his guards? Where were his servants? Such 
an attempt as this, so near the person of a governor of a place 
of war, was enough to alarm the whole garrison; and yet, for 
almost half an hour after Sempronius was killed, we find none of 
those appear who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed ; 
and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women 
thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia 
and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of 
an hysterical gentlewoman : — 

Sure 't was the clash of swords! my troubled heart 
Is so cast down, and sunk amidst its sorrows, 
It throbs with fear, and aches at every sound' 

And immediately her old whimsy returns upon her: — 

Marcia, should thy brothers, for my sake — 

1 die away with horror at the thought. 

She fancies that there can be no cutting of throats but it must 
be for her. If this is tragical, I would fain know what is comi- 
cal. Well ! upon this they spy the body of Sempronius ; and Mar- 
cia, deluded by the habit, it seems, takes him for Juba; for says 
she, — 

The face is muffled up within the garment. 

Now, how a man could fight and fall with his face muffled up in 
his garment is, I think, a little hard to conceive. Besides, Juba, 
before he killed him, knew this to be Sempronius. It was not 
by his garment that he knew this; it was by his face then: his 
face therefore was not muffled. Upon seeing this man with his 
muffled face, Marcia falls a-raving; and, owning her passion for 
the supposed defunct, begins to make his funeral oration. Upon 
which Juba enters listening, — I suppose on tiptoe; for I cannot 
imagine how any one can enter listening in any other posture. 

* Described in The Rehearsal (a burlesque of Dryden's Conquest of Granada). 



220 JOHN DENNIS 

I would fain know how it comes to pass that during all this time 
he had sent nobody, no, not so much as a candle-snuffer, to take 
away the dead body of Sempronius. Well ! but let us regard him 
listening. Having left his apprehension behind him, he at first 
applies what Marcia says to Sempronius. But finding at last, 
with much ado, that he himself is the happy man, he quits his 
eavesdropping, and discovers himself just time enough to pre- 
vent his being cuckolded by a dead man, of whom the moment 
before he had appeared so jealous, and greedily intercepts the 
bliss which was fondly designed for one who could not be the 
better for it. But here I must ask a question: how comes Juba 
to listen here, who had not listened before throughout the play? 
Or how comes he to be the only person of this tragedy who lis- 
tens, when love and treason were so often talked in so pubHc a 
place as a hall? I am afraid the author was driven upon all 
these absurdities only to introduce this miserable mistake of 
Marcia, which, after all, is much below the dignity of tragedy, 
as anything is which is the effect or result of trick. 

But let us come to the scenery of the fifth act. Cato appears 
first upon the scene, sitting in a thoughtful posture, in his hand 
Plato's treatise on the Immortahty of the Soul, a drawn sword 
on the table by him. Now let us consider the place in which 
this sight is presented to us. The place, forsooth, is a long hall. 
Let us suppose that any one should place himself in this posture 
in the midst of one of our halls in London; that he should ap- 
pear solus in a sullen posture, a drawn sword on the table 
by him; in his hand Plato's treatise on the Immortality of the 
Soul, translated lately by Bernard Lintot: I desire the reader 
to consider whether such a person as this would pass with them 
who beheld him for a great patriot, a great philosopher, or a 
general, or some whimsical person who fancied himself all 
these? and whether the people who belonged to the family 
would think that such a person had a design upon their midriffs 
or his own? 

In short, that Cato should sit long enough in the aforesaid 
posture, in the midst of this large hall, to read over Plato's 
treatise on the Immortality of the Soul, which is a lecture of 
two long hours; that he should propose to himself to be private 
there upon that occasion ; that he should be angry with his son 
for intruding there; then, that he should leave this hall upon 



REMARKS UPON CATO 221 

the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal wound in his bed- 
chamber, and then be brought back into that hall to expire, 
purely to show his good breeding and save his friends the trouble 
of coming up to his bed-chamber, — all this appears to me to 
be improbable, incredible, impossible. . . . 






-'<\^ti>-<W 



U^,sJ ^X*^ 



ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, THIRD EARL 
OF SHAFTESBURY 



^ CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN, MANNERS, OPINIONS 

V ^ AND TIMES 

[The above is the title of the collected essays of Lord Shaftesbury. Most 
of them had been earlier published: the " Freedom of Wit and Humor" in 
1709 (as Sensus Communis: an Essay on the Freedom, etc.), "Advice to an 
Author " in 1710 (as Soliloquy: or Advice, etc.). The extracts here given 
are from Part III, Section IV, of the "Freedom of Wit and Humor," and 
Part III, Section III, of "Advice to an Author." With Shaftesbury's doc- 
trine of an absolute standard of worth, in both character and art, should 
be compared the opposing views of Mandeville; see pp. 251-254, below.] 

AN ESSAY ON THE FREEDOM OF WIT AND HUMOR 

'T IS well for you, my friend, that in your education you have 
had little to do vdth the philosophy or philosophers of our days. 
A good poet and an honest historian may afford learning enough 
for a gentleman; and such a one, whilst he reads these authors 
as his diversion, will have a truer relish of their sense and under- 
stand them better than a pedant with all his labors and the as- 
sistance of his volumes of commentators. I am sensible that 
of old 't was the custom to send the youth of highest quality 
to philosophers to be formed. 'T was in their schools, in their 
company, and by their precepts and example, that the illus- 
trious pupils were inured to hardship and exercised in the se- 
verest courses of temperance and self-denial. By such an early 
discipHne they were fitted for the command of others ; to main- 
tain their country's honor in war, rule wisely in the state, and 
fight against luxury and corruption in times of prosperity and 
peace. If any of these arts are comprehended in university 
learning, 'tis well. But as some universities in the world are 
now modeled, they seem not so very effectual to these purposes, 
nor so fortunate in preparing for a right practice of the world, 
or a just knowledge of men and things. Had you been thorough- 
paced in the ethics or politics of the schools, I should never have 



CHARACTERISTICS 223 

thought of writing a word to yoti upon your common sense or 
the love of mankind. I should not have cited the poet's duke et 
decorum; nor, if I had made a character for you, as he for his 
noble friend, should I have crowned it with his — 

Non ilk pro carls amicls 
Aut pairia timidus per ire} 

Our philosophy nowadays runs after the manner of that able 
sophister who said, "Skin for skin: all that a man hath will he 
give for his Hfe." 'Tis orthodox divinity, as well as sound phi- 
losophy, with some men to rate life by the number and exquisite- 
ness of the pleasing sensations. These they constantly set in 
opposition to dry virtue and honesty; and upon this foot they 
think it proper to call all men fools who would hazard a life, or 
part with any of these pleasing sensations, except on the condi- 
tion of being repaid in the same coin and with good interest into 
the bargain. Thus, it seems, we are to learn virtue by usury, 
and enhance the value of life, and of the pleasures of sense, 
in order to be wise and to live well. 

But you, my friend, are stubborn in this point; and instead 
of being brought to think mournfully of death, or to repine at 
the loss of what you may sometimes hazard by your honesty, 
you can laugh at such maxims as these, and divert yourself 
with the improved selfishness and philosophical cowardice of 
these fashionable moralists. You will not be taught to value 
life at their rate, or degrade honesty as they do, who make it 
only a name. You are persuaded there is something more in the 
thing than fashion or applause; that worth and merit are sub- 
stantial, and no way variable by fancy or will; and that honor 
is as much itself when acting by itself and unseen, as when seen 
and applauded by all the world. 

Should one who had the countenance of a gentleman ask me 
"why I would avoid being nasty, when nobody was present?", 
in the first place I should be fully satisfied that he himself was 
a very nasty gentleman who could ask this question, and that it 
would be a hard matter for me to make him ever conceive what 
true cleanliness was. However, I might, notwithstanding this, 
be contented to give him a slight answer, and say "'twas be- 
cause I had a nose." Should he trouble me further and ask 
again, "what if I had a cold? or what if naturally I had no such 

1 "He is not afraid to die for his dear friends or his country." 



224 LORD SHAFTESBURY 

nice smell?" I might answer perhaps "that I cared as little to 
see myself nasty as that others should see me in that condition." 
But what if it were in the dark? Why even then, though I had 
neither nose nor eyes, my sense of the matter would still be the 
same : my nature would rise at the thought of what was sordid ; 
or if it did not, I should have a wretched nature indeed, and hate 
myself for a beast. Honor myself I never could, whilst I had no 
better a sense of what in reaUty I owed myself, and what be- 
came me as a human creature. 

Much in the same manner have I heard it asked. Why should 
a man be honest in the dark? What a man must be to ask this 
question I will not say. But for those who have no better a 
reason for being honest than the fear of a gibbet or a jail, I 
should not, I confess, much covet their company or acquaint- 
ance. And if any guardian of mine who had kept his trust, and 
given me back my estate when I came of age, had been discov- 
ered to have acted thus through fear only of what might happen 
to him, I should for my own part undoubtedly continue civil 
and respectful to him ; but for my opinion of his worth, it would 
be such as the Pythian god had of his votary, who devoutly 
feared him, and therefore restored to a friend what had been 
deposited in his hands: — 

Reddidit ergo metu, non moribus; et tamen omnem 
Vocem adyti dignam templo, veramquc probavit, 
Extinctus tola par iter cum prole domoque} 

I know very well that many services to the public are done 
merely for the sake of a gratuity; and that informers in particu- 
lar are to be taken care of, and sometimes made pensioners of 
state. But I must beg pardon for the particular thoughts I may 
have of these gentlemen's merit, and shall never bestow my 
esteem on any other than the voluntary discoverers of villainy 
and hearty prosecutors of their country's interest. And in this 
respect, I know nothing greater or nobler than the undertake 
ing and managing some important accusation, by which some 
high criminal of state, or some formed body of conspirators 
against the public, may be arraigned and brought to punish- 
ment, through the honest zeal and public affection of a private 
man. 

' "He made restitution, therefore, through fear, not morality; and yet proved the 
whole oracle as worthy of the temple and true, being destroyed completely, together with 
his children and house." 



CHARACTERISTICS 225 

I know, too, that ^le mere vulgar of mankind often stand in 
need of such a rectifying object as the gallows before their eyes. 
Yet I have no belief that any man of a liberal education, or 
common honesty, ever needed to have recourse to this idea in 
his mind, the better to restrain him from playing the knave. 
And if a saint had no other virtue than what was raised in him 
by the same objects of reward and punishment, in a more dis- 
tant state, I know not whose love or esteem he might gain be- 
sides, but for my own part I should never think him worthy 
of mine. . . . 

ADVICE TO AN AUTHOR 

. . . However difficult or desperate it may appear in any 
artist to endeavor to bring perfection into his work, if he has not 
at least the idea of perfection to give him aim, he will be found 
very defective and mean in performance. Though his intention 
be to please the world, he must nevertheless be, in a manner, 
above it, and fix his eye upon that consummate grace, that 
beauty of nature, and that perfection of numbers, which the rest 
of mankind, feeHng only by the efTect whilst ignorant of the 
cause, term the je ne sais quoi, the unintelligible or the / know not 
what, and suppose to be a kind of charm of enchantment, of 
which the artist himself can give no account. 

But here I find I am tempted to do what I have myself con- 
demned. Hardly can I forbear making some apology for my 
frequent recourse to the rules of common artists, to the masters 
of exercise, to the academies of painters, statuaries, and to the 
rest of the virtuoso tribe. But in this I am so fully satisfied I 
have reason on my side, that, let custom be ever so strong 
against me, I had rather repair to these inferior schools to 
search for truth and nature, than to sopie other places where 
higher arts and sciences are professed. 

I am persuaded that to be a virtuoso (so far as befits a gentle- 
man) is a higher step towards the becoming a man of virtue and 
good sense, than the being what in this age we call a scholar. 
For even rude nature itself, in its primitive simpHcity, is a better -f^--' yv- 
guide to judgment than improved sophistry and pedantic 
learning. The faciu7ttne intellegendo , ut nihil intellegant^ will be 
ever applied by men of discernment and free thought to such 

1 " Do they not bring it about by their knowingness that they know nothing at all? " 
(Terence.) 



226 LORD SHAFTESBURY 

logic, such principles, such forms and rudiments of knowledge, 
as are established in certain schools of literature and science. 
The case is sufficiently understood even by those who are un- 
willing to confess the truth of it. Effects betray their causes. 
And the known turn and figure of those understandings which 
sprout from nurseries of this kind, give a plain idea of what is 
judged on this occasion. 'Tis no wonder if, after so wrong a 
ground of education, there appears to be such need of redress 
and amendment from that excellent school which we call the 
world. The mere amusements of gentlemen are found more 
improving than the profound researches of pedants ; and in the 
management of our youth we are forced to have recourse to 
the former, as an antidote against the genius pecuHar to the 
latter. If the formalists of this world were erected into pat- 
entees with a sole commission of authorship, we should un- 
doubtedly see such writing in our days as would either wholly 
wean us from all books in general, or at least from all such as 
were the product of our own nation under such a subordinate 
and conforming government. 

However this may prove, there can be no kind of writing 
which relates to men and manners where it is not necessary for 
the author to understand poetical and moral truth, the beauty 
of sentiments, the sublime of characters, and carry in his eye 
the model or exemplar of that natural grace which gives to every 
action its attractive charm. If he has naturally no eye or ear for 
these interior numbers, 'tis not likely he should be able to 
judge better of that exterior proportion and symmetry of 
composition which constitutes a legitimate piece. 

Could we once convince ourselves of what is in itself so evi- 
dent, that in the very nature of things there must of necessity 
be the foundation of a right and wrong taste, as well in respect 
of inward characters and features as of outward person, be- 
havior, and action, we should be far more ashamed of ignorance 
and wrong judgment in the former than in the latter of these 
subjects. Even in the arts, which are mere imitations of that 
outward grace and beauty, we not only confess a taste, but make 
it a part of refined breeding to discover amidst the many false 
manners and ill styles the true and natural one, which repre- 
sents the real beauty and Venus of the kind. 'T is the like moral 
grace and Venus which, discovering itself in the turns of charac- 



CHARACTERISTICS 227 

ter and the variety of human affection, is copied by the writing 
artist. If he knows not this Venus, these graces, nor was ever 
struck with the beauty, the decorum of this inward kind, he can 
neither paint advantageously after the Hfe nor in a feigned sub- 
ject where he has full scope. For never can he, on these terms, 
represent merit and virtue, or mark deformity and blemish. 
Never can he with justice and true proportion assign the boun- 
daries of either part, or separate the distant characters. ^ The 
schemes must be defective, and the draughts confused, where 
the standard is weakly established and the measure out of use. 
Such a designer, who has so little feeling of these proportions, so 
little consciousness of this excellence or these perfections, will 
never be found able to describe a perfect character; or, what is 
more according to art, express the effect and force of this per- 
fection from the result of various and mixed characters of Hfe. 

And thus the sense of inward numbers, the knowledge and 
practice of the social virtues, and the familiarity and favor of 
the moral graces, are essential to the character of a deserving 
artist and just favorite of the Muses. Thus are the Arts and 
Virtues mutually friends; and thus the science of virtuosi and 
that of virtue itself become, in a manner, one and the same. 

One who aspires to the character of a man of breeding and 
politeness is careful to form his judgment of arts and sciences 
upon right models of perfection. If he travels to Rome, he in- 
quires which are the truest pieces of architecture, the best re- 
mains of statues, the best paintings of a Raphael or a Caraccio. 
However antiquated, rough, or dismal they may appear to him 
at first sight, he resolves to view them over and over, till he has 
brought himself to relish them, and finds their hidden graces and 
perfections. He takes particular care to turn his eye from every- 
thing which is gaudy, luscious, and of a false taste. Nor is he less 
careful to turn his ear from every sort of music besides that 
which is of the best manner and truest harmony. 

'T were to be wished we had the same regard to a right taste 
in life and manners. What mortal being, once convinced of a 
difference in inward character, and of a preference due to one 
kind above another, would not be concerned to make his own 
the best? If civility and humanity be a taste; if brutality, in- 
solence, riot, be in the same manner a taste, who, if he could 
reflect, would not choose to form himself on the amiable and 



228 LORD SHAFTESBURY 

agreeable rather than the odious and perverse model? Who 
would not endeavor to force nature as well in this respect as in 
what relates to a taste or judgment in other arts and sciences? 
For in each place the force on nature is used only for its redress. 
If a natural good taste be not already formed in us, why should 
not we endeavor to form it, and cultivate it till it become 
natural? 

"Hike! I fancy! I admire! How? By accident, or as I please? 
No. But I learn to fancy, to admire, to please, as the subjects 
themselves are deserving, and can bear me out. Otherwise I hke 
at this hour but dislike the next. I shall be weary of my pur- 
suit, and, upon experience, find little pleasure in the main, if my 
choice and judgment in it be from no other rule than that single 
one, because I please. Grotesque and monstrous figures often 
please. Cruel spectacles and barbarities are also found to please, 
and, in some tempers, to please beyond all other subjects. But is 
this pleasure right? And shall I follow it if it presents? not strive 
with it, or endeavor to prevent its growth or prevalency in my 
temper? How stands the case in a more soft and flattering kind 
of pleasure? Effeminacy pleases me. The Indian figures, the 
Japan work, the enamel strikes my eye. The luscious colors and 
glossy paint gain upon my fancy. A French or Flemish style is 
highly liked by me at first sight, and I pursue my liking. But 
what ensues? Do I not forever forfeit my good relish? How is it 
possible I should thus come to taste the beauties of an Italian 
master, or of a hand happily formed on nature and the ancients ? 
'Tis not by wantonness and humor that I shall attain my end 
and arrive at the enjoyment I propose. The art itself is severe, 
the rules rigid. And if I expect the knowledge should come to 
me by accident, or in play, I shall be grossly deluded, and prove 
myself, at best, a mock- virtuoso or mere pedant of the kind." 

Here therefore we have once again exhibited our moral sci- 
ence in the same method and manner of soliloquy as above. 
To this correction of humor and formation of a taste, our read- 
ing, if it be of the right sort, must principally contribute. What- 
ever company we keep, or however polite and agreeable their 
characters may be with whom we converse or correspond, if the 
authors we read are of another kind, we shall find our palate 
strangely turned their way. We are the unhappier in this re- 
spect for being scholars, if our studies be ill chosen. Nor can I, 



CHARACTERISTICS . 229 

for this reason, think it proper to call a man well-read who reads 
many authors, since he must of necessity have more ill models 
than good, and be more stuffed with bombast, ill fancy, and wry 
thought, than filled with solid sense and just imagination. . . . 

One would imagine that our philosophical writers, who pre- 
tend to treat of morals, should far out-do mere poets in recom- 
mending virtue, and representing what was fair and amiable in 
human actions. One would imagine that, if they turned their 
eye towards remote countries (of which they affect so much to 
speak) , they should search for that simplicity of manners and 
innocence of behavior which has been often known among mere 
savages, ere they were corrupted by our commerce, and, by sad 
example, instructed in all kinds of treachery and inhumanity. 
'T would be of advantage to us to hear the causes of this strange 
corruption in ourselves, and be made to consider of our devia- 
tion from nature, and from that just purity of manners which 
might be expected, especially from a people so assisted and en- 
lightened by religion. For who would not naturally expect more 
justice, fidelity, temperance, and honesty from Christians than 
from Mahometans or mere pagans? But so far are our modern 
moralists from condemning any unnatural vices or corrupt 
manners, whether in our own or foreign climates, that they 
would have vice itself appear as natural as virtue, and from the 
worst examples would represent to us that all actions are natu- 
rally indifferent; that they have no note or character of good or 
ill in themselves, but are distinguished by mere fashion, law or 
arbitrary decree. Wonderful philosophy! raised from the dregs 
of an illiterate, mean kind, which was ever despised among the 
great ancients, and rejected by all men of action or sound erudi- 
tion, but in these ages imperfectly copied from the original, and, 
with much disadvantage, imitated and assumed in common 
both by devout and indevout attempters in the moral kind. 

Should a writer upon music, addressing himself to the stu- 
dents and lovers of the art, declare to them that the measure 
or rule of harmony was caprice or will, humor or fashion, 'tis 
not very likely he should be heard with great attention or treated 
with real gravity. For harmony is harmony by nature, let men 
judge ever so ridiculously of music. So is symmetry and pro- 
portion founded still in nature, let men's fancy prove ever so 
barbarous, or their fashions ever so Gothic, in their architec- 



230 LORD SHAFTESBURY 

ture, sculpture, or whatever other designing art. 'Tis the same 
case where life and manners are concerned. Virtue has the 
same fixed standard. The same numbers, harmony, and pro- 
portion will have place in morals, and are discoverable in the 
characters and affections of mankind ; in which are laid the just 
foundations of an art and science superior to every other of 
human practice and comprehension. . . . 







'..uiU>»^ «^ «*-^^ > ^ 



\^ 



.-V.<!- ■■ ' .-<-» 



^ •C^l 



GEORGE BERKELEY 
DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS 

1713 

[Berkeley is the only English philosopher of the eighteenth century 
whose style makes him a figure of importance in literature. In 17 10 he 
had published his Principles of Human Knowledge, setting forth his theory 
that the universe is purely spiritual, and that the existence of material 
substance is an unnecessary assumption. It had been much misunder- 
stood, and to answer the arguments of his opponents he made use of the 
form of the Platonic dialogue in the work here represented. In Hylas (con- 
nected with Greek vX-q, matter) he personifies the belief in material sub- 
stance; in Philonous (" lover of mind ") his own doctrine. The extracts are 
chiefly from the first dialogue, with a short passage from the second and 
another from the conclusion of the third.] 

. . . Hylas. You were represented in last night's conversa- 
tion as one who maintained the most extravagant opinion that 
ever entered into the mind of man, to wit, that there is no such 
thing as material substance in the world. 

Philonous. That there is no such thing as what philosophers 
call material substance, I am seriously persuaded; but if I were 
made to see anything absurd or skeptical in this, I should then 
have the same reason to renounce this that I imagine I have now 
to reject the contrary opinion. 

Hylas. What! Can anything be more fantastical, more re- 
pugnant to common sense, or a more manifest piece of skepti- 
cism, than to beheve there is no such thing as matter? 

Philonous. Softly, good Hylas. What if it should prove that 
you, who hold there is, are by virtue of that opinion a greater 
skeptic, and maintain more paradoxes and repugnances to com- 
mon sense, than I who believe no such thing? 

Hylas. You may as soon persuade me the part is greater than 
the whole as that, in order to avoid absurdity and skepticism, I 
should ever be obliged to give up my opinion in this point. 

Philonous. Well, then, are you content to admit that opinion 
for true which, upon examination, shall appear most agreeable 
to common sense, and remote from skepticism? - 



232 GEORGE BERKELEY 

Eylas. With all my heart. Since you are for raising disputes 
about the plainest things in nature, I am content for once to 
hear what you have to say. 

Philonous. Pray, Hylas, what do you mean by a skeptic? 

Eylas. I mean what all men mean, — one that doubts of 
everything. 

Philonous. He, then, who entertains no doubt concerning 
some particular point, with regard to that point cannot be 
thought a skeptic. 

Eylas. I agree with you. 

Philonous. Whether doth doubting consist in embracing the 
affirmative or negative side of a question? 

Eylas. In neither; for whoever understands English cannot 
but know that doubting signifies a suspense between both. 

Philonous. He, then, that denies any point can no more be 
said to doubt of it, than he who affirmeth it with the same de- 
gree of assurance. 

Eylas. True. 

Philonous. And, consequently, for such his denial is no more 
to be esteemed a skeptic than the other. 

Eylas. I acknowledge it. 

Philonous. How cometh it to pass, then, Hylas, that you 
pronounce me a skeptic because I deny what you affirm, to wit, 
the existence of matter? Since, for aught you can tell, I am as 
peremptory in my denial as you in your affirmation. 

Eylas. Hold, Philonous, — I have been a little out in my 
definition; but every false step a man makes in discourse is not 
to be insisted on. I said, indeed, that a skeptic was one who 
doubted of everything; but I should have added, or who denies 
the reality and truth of things. 

Philonous. What things? Do you mean the principles and 
theorems of sciences? But these you know are universal intel- 
lectual notions, and consequently independent of matter; the 
denial therefore of this doth not imply the denying them. 

Eylas. I grant it. But are there no other things? What think 
you of distrusting the senses, of denying the real existence of 
sensible things, or pretending to know nothing of them? Is not 
this sufficient to denominate a man a skeptic? 

Philonous. Shall we therefore examine which of us it is that 
denies the reality of sensible things, or professes the greatest 



DIALOGUES 233 

ignorance of them? — since, if I take you rightly, he is to be es- 
teemed the greatest skeptic? 

Hylas. That is what I desire. 

Philonous. What mean you by sensible things? 

Hylas. Those things which are perceived by the senses. Can 
you imagine that I mean anything else? 

Philonous. Pardon me, Hylas, if I am desirous clearly to ap- 
prehend your notions, since this may much shorten our inquiry. 
Suffer me then to ask you this farther question. Are those 
things only perceived by the senses which are perceived imme- 
diately? Or, may those things properly be said to be sensible 
which are perceived mediately, or not without the intervention 
of others? 

Hylas. I do not sufficiently understand you. 

Philonous. In reading a book, what I immediately perceive 
are the letters, but mediately, or by means of these, are sug- 
gested to my mind the notions of God, virtue, truth, etc. Now, 
that the letters are truly sensible things, or perceived by sense, 
there is no doubt; but I would know whether you take the things 
suggested by them to be so too. 

Hylas. No, certainly; it were absurd to think God or virtue 
sensible things, though they may be signified and suggested to 
the mind by sensible marks, with which they have an arbitrary 
connection. 

Philonous. It seems, then, that by sensible things you mean 
those only which can be perceived immediately by sense? 

Hylas. Right. 

Philonous. Doth it not follow from this that, though I see 
one part of the sky red, and anothei* blue, and that my reason 
doth thence evidently conclude there must be some cause of 
that diversity of colors, yet that cause cannot be said to be a 
sensible thing, or perceived by the sense of seeing? 

Hylas. It doth. 

Philonous. In like manner, though I hear variety of sounds, 
yet I cannot be said to hear the causes of those sounds? 

Hylas. You cannot. 

Philonous. And when by my touch I perceive a thing to be 
hot and heavy, I cannot say, with any truth or propriety, that I 
feel the cause of its heat or weight? 

Hylas. To prevent any more questions of this kind, I tell you 



234 GEORGE BERKELEY 

once for all that by sensible things I mean those only which are 
perceived by sense, and that in truth the senses perceive nothing 
which they do not perceive immediately; for they make no in- 
ferences. The deducing, therefore, of causes or occasions from 
effects or appearances, which alone are perceived by sense, en- 
tirely relates to reason. 

Philonous. This point, then, is agreed between us, — that 
sensible things are those only which are immediately perceived 
by sense. You will farther inform me whether we immediately 
perceive by sight anything beside light, and colors, and figures; 
or by hearing anything but sounds; by the palate, anything 
beside tastes; by the smell, beside odors; or by the touch, more 
than tangible qualities. 

Hylas. We do not. 

Philonous. It seems, therefore, that if you take away all 
sensible qualities, there remains nothing sensible? 

Hylas. I grant it. 

Philonous. Sensible things, therefore, are nothing else but 
so many sensible qualities, or combinations of sensible quali- 
ties? 

Hylas. Nothing else. 

Philonous. Heat, then, is a sensible thing? 

Hylas. Certainly. 

Philonous. Doth the reality of sensible things consist in be- 
ing perceived? or is it something distinct from their being per- 
ceived, and that bears no relation to the mind? 

Hylas. To exist is one thing, and to be perceived another. 

Philonous. I speak with regard to sensible things only; and 
of these I ask, whether by their real existence you mean a sub- 
sistence exterior to the mind, and distinct from their being per- 
ceived? 

Hylas. I mean a real absolute being, distinct from, and with- 
out any relation to, their being perceived. 

Philonous. Heat, therefore, if it be allowed a real being, must 
exist without the mind? 

Hylas. It must. 

Philonous. Tell me, Hylas, is this real existence equally 
compatible to all degrees of heat which we perceive, or is there 
any reason why we should attribute it to some, and deny it of 
others? And if there be, pray let me know that reason. 



DIALOGUES 235 

Eylas. Whatever degree of heat we perceive by sense, we may 
be sure the same exists in the object that occasions it. 

Philonous. What! the greatest as well as the least? 

Eylas. I tell you, the reason is plainly the same in respect of 
both ; they are both perceived by sense. Nay, the greater degree 
of heat is more sensibly perceived; and consequently, if there is 
any difference, we are more certain of its real existence than we 
can be of the reality of a lesser degree. 

Philonous. But is not the most vehement and intense de- 
gree of heat a very great pain? 

Eylas. No one can deny it. 

Philonous. And is any unperceiving thing capable of pain or 
pleasure? 

Eylas. No, certainly. 

Philonous. Is your material substance a senseless being, or a 
being endowed with sense and perception? 

Eylas. It is senseless, without doubt. 

Philonous. It cannot, therefore, be the subject of pain? 

Eylas. By no means. 

Philonous. Nor, consequently, of the greatest heat perceived 
by sense, since you acknowledge this to be no small pain? 

Eylas. I grant it. 

Philonous. What shall we say, then, of your external object: 
is it a material substance, or no? _ 

Eylas. It is a material substance with the sensible qualities 
inhering in it. 

Philonous. How, then, can a great heat exist in it, since you 
own it cannot in a material substance? I desire you would clear 
this point. 

Eylas. Hold, Philonous, — I fear I was out in yielding intense 
heat to be a pain. It should seem rather that pain is something 
distinct from heat, and the consequence or effect of it. 

Philonous. Upon putting your hand near the fire, do you per- 
ceive one simple uniform sensation, or two distinct sensations? 

Eylas. But one simple sensation. 

Philonous. Is not the heat immediately perceived? 

Eylas. It is. 

Philonous. And the pain? 

Eylas. True. 

Philonous. Seeing, therefore, they are both immediately 



236 GEORGE BERKELEY 

perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with 
one simple or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same 
simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, 
and the pain; and, consequently, that the intense heat im- 
mediately perceived is nothing distinct from a particular sort 
of pain. 

Hylas. It seems so. 

Philonous. Again, try in your thoughts, Hylas, if you can 
conceive a vehement sensation to be without pain or pleasure. 

Hylas. I cannot. 

Philonous. Or can you frame to yourself an idea of sensible 
pain or pleasure in general, abstracted from every particular 
idea of heat, cold, tastes, smells, etc? 

Hylas. I do not find that I can. 
^' Philonous. Doth it not therefore follow that sensible pain is 
nothing distinct from those sensations or ideas, in an intense 
degree? 

Hylas. It is undeniable; and, to speak the truth, I begin to 
suspect a very great heat cannot exist but in a mind perceiving 
it. 

Philonous. What! are you then in that skeptical state of sus- 
pense, between affirming and denying? 

Hylas. I think I may be positive in the point. A very violent 
and painful heat cannot exist without the mind. 

Philonous. It hath not, therefore, according to you, any real 
being? 

Hylas. I own it. 

Philonous. Is it therefore certain that there is no body in na- 
ture really hot? 

Hylas. I have not denied there is any real heat in bodies. I 
only say there is no such thing as an intense real heat. 

Philonous. But did you not say before that all degrees of 
heat were equally real; or, if there was any difference, that the 
greater were more undoubtedly real than the lesser? 

Hylas. True: but it was because I did not then consider the 
ground there is for distinguishing between them, which I now 
plainly see. And it is this: because intense heat is nothing 
else but a particular kind of painful sensation, and pain cannot 
exist but in a perceiving being, it follows that no intense heat 
can really exist in an unperceiving corporeal substance. But this 



DIALOGUES 237 

is no reason why we should . deny heat in an inferior degree to 
exist in such a substance. 

Philonous. But how shall we be able to discern those degrees 
of heat which exist only in the mind from those which exist 
without it? 

Eylas. That is no difficult matter. You know the least pain 
cannot exist unperceived; whatever, therefore, degree of heat is 
aTpain exists only in the mind. But as for all other degrees of 
heat, nothing obliges us to think the same of them. 

Philonous. I think you granted before that no unperceiving 
being was capable of pleasure, any more than of pain. 

Hylas. I did. 

Philonous. And is not warmth, or a more gentle degree of 
heat than what causes uneasiness, a pleasure? 

Hylas. What then? 

Philonous. Consequently it cannot exist without the mind in 
an unperceiving substance or body. 

Hylas. So it seems. 

Philonous. Since, therefore, as well those degrees of heat that 
are not painful, as those that are, can exist only in a thinking 
substance, may we not conclude that external bodies are abso- 
lutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever? 

Hylas. On second thoughts, I do not think it is so evident 
that warmth is a pleasure, as that a great degree of heat is a pain. 

Philonous. I do not pretend that warmth is as great a plea- 
sure as heat is a pain. But, if you grant it to be even a small 
pleasure, it serves to make good my conclusion. 

Hylas. I could rather call it an indolence. It seems to be 
nothing more than a privation of both pain and pleasure. And 
that such a quality or state as this may agree to an unthinking 
substance, I hope you will not deny. 

Philonous. If you are resolved to maintain that warmth, or a 
gentle degree of heat, is no pleasure, I know not how to convince 
you otherwise than by appealing to your own sense. But what 
think you of cold? 

Hylas. The same that I do of heat. An intense degree of 
cold is a pain; for to feel a very great cold is to perceive a 
great uneasiness; it cannot, therefore, exist without the mind. 
But a lesser degree of cold may, as well as a lesser degree of 
heat. 



238 GEORGE BERKELEY 

Philonous. Those bodies, therefore, upon whose application 
to our own we perceive a moderate degree of heat, must be con- 
cluded to have a moderate degree of heat or warmth in them ; 
and those upon whose appHcation we feel a Hke degree of cold, 
must be thought to have cold in them. 

Hylas. They must. 

Philonous. Can any doctrine be true that necessarily leads a 
man into an absurdity? 

Hylas. Without doubt it cannot. 

Philonous. Is it not an absurdity to think that the same thing 
should be at the same time both cold and warm? 

Hylas. It is. 

Philonous. Suppose, now, one of your hands hot, and the 
other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same 
vessel of water, in an intermediate state; will not the water seem 
cold to one hand and warm to the other? 

Hylas. It will. 

Philonous. Ought we not, therefore, by your principles, to 
conclude it is really both cold and warm at the same time, — 
that is, according to your own concession, to beUeve an ab- 
surdity? 

Hylas. I confess it seems so. 

Philonous. Consequently the principles themselves are false, 
since you have granted that no true principle leads to an ab- 
surdity. 

Hylas. But, after all, can anything be more absurd than to 
say "there is no heat in the fire"? 

Philonous. To make the point still clearer — tell me whether 
in two cases exactly alike we ought not to make the same judg- 
ment. 

Hylas. We ought. 

Philonous. When a pin pricks your finger, doth it not rend 
and divide the fibres of your flesh? 

Hylas. It doth. 

Philonous. And when a coal burns your finger, doth it any 
more? 

Hylas. It doth not. 

Philonous. Since, therefore, you neither judge the sensation 
itself occasioned by the pin, nor anything like it to be in the pin, 
you should not, conformably to what you have now granted, 



DIALOGUES 239 

judge the sensation occasioned by the fire, or anything hke it, 
to be in the fire. 

Eylas. Well, since it must be so, I am content to yield this 
point, and acknowledge that heat and cold are only sensations 
existing in our minds. But there still remain qualities enough 
to secure the reality of external things. 

Philonous. But what will you say, Hylas, if it shall appear 
that the case is the same with regard to all other sensible quali- 
ties, and that they can no more be supposed to exist without the 
mind than heat and cold? 

Hylas. Then indeed you will have done something to the 
purpose; but that is what I despair of seeing proved. . . . 

Philonous. Then as to sounds, what must we think of them? 
Are they accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not? 

Hylas. That they inhere not in the sonorous bodies is plain 
from hence : because a bell struck in the exhausted receiver of an 
air-pump sends forth no sound. The air, therefore, must be 
thought the subject of sound. 

Philonous. What reason is there for that, Hylas? 

Hylas. Because, when any motion is raised in the air, we 
perceive a sound greater or lesser, according to the air's motion ; 
but without some motion in the air we never hear any sound 
at all. 

Philonous. And granting that we never hear a sound but 
when some motion is produced in the air, yet I do not see how 
you can infer from thence that the sound itself is in the air. 

Hylas. It is this very motion in the external air that pro- 
duces in the mind the sensation of sound. For, striking on the 
drum of the ear, it causeth a vibration, which by the auditory 
nerves being communicated to the brain, the soul is thereupon 
affected with the sensation called sound. 

Philonous. What! is sound, then, a sensation? 

Hylas. I tell you, as perceived by us, it is a particular sensa- 
tion in the mind. 

Philonous. And can any sensation exist without the mind? 

Hylas. No, certainly. 

Philonous. How then can sound, being a sensation, exist in 
the air, if by the air you mean a senseless substance existing 
without the mind? 

Hylas. You must distinguish, Philonous, between sound as it 



240 GEORGE BERKELEY 

is perceived by us, and as it is in itself, or — which is the same 
thing — between the sound we immediately perceive, and that 
which exists without us. The former, indeed, is a particular 
kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a vibrative or undula- 
tory motion in the air. ~" 

PMlonous. I thought I had already obviated that distinction, 
by the answer I gave when you were applying it in a hke case be- 
fore. But, to say no more of that, are you sure, then, that sound 
is really nothing but motion? 

Hylas. I am. 

PMlonous. Whatever, therefore, agrees to real sound, may 
with truth be attributed to motion? 

Hylas. It may. 

Philonous. It is then good sense to speak of motion as of a 
thing that is loud, sweet, acute, or grave. 

Hylas. I see you are resolved not to understand me. Is it 
not evident those accidents or modes belong only to sensible 
sound, or sound in the common acceptation of the word, but 
not to sound in the real and philosophic sense? — which, as I 
just now told you, is nothing but a certain motion of the air. 

Philonous. It seems, then, there are two sorts of sound, — 
the one vulgar, or that which is heard, the other philosophical 
and real? 

Hylas. Even so. 

Philonous. And the latter consists in motion? 

Hylas. 1 told you so before. 

Philonous. Tell me, Hylas, to which of the senses, think you, 
the idea of motion belongs? to the hearing? 

Hylas. No, certainly; but to the sight and touch. 

Philonous. It should follow, then, that, according to you, 
real sounds may possibly be seen or felt, but never heard. 

Hylas. Look you, Philonous, you may, if you please, make 
a jest of my opinion, but that will not alter the truth of things. 
I own, indeed, the inferences you draw me into sound some- 
thing oddly; but common language, you know, is framed by, 
and for the use of, the vulgar; we must not therefore wonder, if 
expressions adapted to exact philosophic notions seem uncouth 
and out of the way. 

Philonous. Is it come to that? I assure you, I imagine myself 
to have gained no small point, since you make so light of part- 



DIALOGUES 241 

ing from common phrases and opinions ; it being a main part of 
our inquiry to examine whose notions are widest of the common 
road, and most repugnant to the general sense of the world. 
But can you think it no more than a philosophical paradox, to 
say that real sounds are never heard, and that the idea of them is 
obtained by some other sense? And is there nothing in this 
contrary to nature and the truth of things? 

Hylas. To deal ingenuously, I do not like it. And, after the 
concessions already made, I had as well grant that sounds too 
have no real being without the mind. 

Philonous. Well, then, are you at length satisfied that no 
sensible things have a real existence, and that you are in truth 
an arrant skeptic? 

Hylas. It is too plain to be denied. 

Philonous. Look! are not the fields covered with a delightful 
verdure? Is there not something in the woods and groves, in 
the rivers and clear springs, that soothes, that delights, that 
transports the soul? At the prospect of the wide and deep 
ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the clouds, 
or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with a pleas- 
ing horror? Even in rocks and deserts is there not an agreeable 
wildness? How sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural 
beauties of the earth! To preserve and renew our reHsh for 
them, is not the veil of night alternately drawn over her face, and 
doth she not change her dress with the seasons? How aptly are 
the elements disposed ! What variety and use in the meanest 
productions of nature! What delicacy, what beauty, what con- 
trivance, in animal and vegetable bodies! How exquisitely are 
all things suited, as well to their particular ends, as to consti- 
tute opposite parts of the whole! And, while they mutually aid 
and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other? 
Raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those 
glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. The 
motion and situation of the planets, — are they not admirable 
for use and order? Were those — miscalled erratic — globes 
once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the 
pathless void? Do they not measure areas round the sun ever 
proportioned to the times? So fixed, so immutable are the laws 
by which the unseen Author of nature actuates the universe. 



242 GEORGE BERKELEY 

How vivid and radiant is the lustre of the fixed stars! How 
magnificent and rich that negligent profusion with which they 
appear to be scattered throughout the whole azure vault ! yet, if 
you take the telescope, it brings into your sight a new host of 
stars that escape the naked eye. Here they seem contiguous 
and minute, but to a nearer view immense orbs of light, at vari- 
ous distances, far sunk in the abyss of space. Now you must 
call imagination to your aid. The feeble narrow sense cannot 
descry innumerable worlds revolving round the central fires, 
and in those worlds the energy of an all-perfect Mind displayed 
in endless forms. But neither sense nor imagination are big 
enough to comprehend the boundless extent, with all its gUtter- 
ing furniture. Though the laboring mind exert and strain each 
power to its utmost reach, there still stands out ungrasped a 
surplusage immeasurable. Yet all the vast bodies that compose 
this mighty frame, how distant and remote soever, are by some 
secret mechanism, some divine art and force, finked in a mutual 
dependence and intercourse with each other, even with this 
earth, which was almost slipped from my thoughts and lost in 
the crowd of worlds. Is not the whole system immense, beauti- 
ful, glorious beyond expression and beyond thought! What 
treatment, then, do those philosophers deserve, who would 
deprive these noble and defightful scenes of all reality? How 
should those principles be entertained that lead us to think all 
the visible beauty of the creation a false imaginary glare? To 
be plain, can you expect this skepticism of yours will not be 
thought extravagantly absurd by all men of sense? 

Hylas. Other men may think as they please, but for your 
part you have nothing to reproach me with. My comfort is, you 
are as much a skeptic as I am. 

Philonous. There, Hylas, I must beg leave to differ from you. 

Hylas. What! Have you all along agreed to the premises, 
and do you now deny the conclusion, and leave me to maintain 
those paradoxes by myself which you led me into? This surely 
is not fair. 

Philonous. I deny that I agreed with you in those notions 
that led to skepticism. You indeed said the reality of sensible 
things consisted in an absolute existence out of the minds of 
spirits, or distinct from their being perceived. And, pursuant 
to this notion of reafity, you are obliged to deny sensible things 



DIALOGUES 243 

any real existence; that is, according to your own definition, 
you profess yourself a skeptic. But I neither said nor thought 
the reahty of sensible things was to be defined after that man- 
ner. To me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sen- 
sible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. 
Whence I conclude, not that they have no real existence, but 
that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an ex- 
istence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some 
other mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible 
world really exists, so sure is there an infinite, omnipresent 
Spirit, who contains and supports it. 

Hylas. What! This is no more than I and all Christians 
hold; nay, and all others too who believe there is a God, and 
that He knows and comprehends all things. 

Philonous. Aye, but here hes the difference. Men commonly 
believe that all things are known or perceived by God, because 
they believe the being of a God; whereas I, on the other side, 
immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a God, be- 
cause all sensible things must be perceived by Him. 

Hylas. ... It is plain I do not now think with the philoso- 
phers, nor yet altogether with the vulgar. I would know how 
the case stands in that respect; precisely what you have added 
to or altered in my former notions. 

Philonous. 'I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. 
My endeavors tend only to unite and place in a clearer light 
that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the 
philosophers, — the former being of opinion that those things 
they immediately perceive are the real things, and the latter, 
that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist 
only in the mind. Which two notions, put together, do in effect 
constitute the substance of what I advance. 

Hylas. I have been a long time distrusting my senses; me- 
thought I saw things by a dim light and through false glasses. 
Now the glasses are removed, and a new light breaks in upon 
my understanding. I am clearly convinced that I see things in 
their native forms, and am no longer in pain about their un- 
known natures or absolute existence. This is the state I find 
myself in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought 
me to it I do not yet thoroughly comprehend. You set out 



244 GEORGE BERKELEY 

upon the same principles that Academics, Cartesians, and the 
like sects usually do, and for a long time it looked as if you 
were advancing their philosophical skepticism; but in the end 
your conclusions are directly opposite to theirs. 

Philonous. You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, — 
how it is forced upwards, in a round column, to a certain height, 
at which it breaks, and falls back into the basin from whence it 
rose; its ascent as well as descent proceeding from the same uni- 
form law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same princi- 
ples which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain 
point, bring men back to common sense. 






BERNARD MANDEVILLE 
THE FABLE OF THE BEES 

OR, PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC BENEFITS 
I714, 1723 

{The Fable of the Bees is a composite work, consisting of "The Grum- 
bling Hive," a poem which had been separately published in 1705, the "In- 
quiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue" (which appeared in the 17 14 vol- 
ume) , the " Search into the Nature of Society" (which was added in 1723), 
and other Essays and Remarks. The book was denounced as a nuisance 
by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, in 1723, and many replies to it were pub- 
lished, — by Berkeley, among others, in Alciphron. Some of the positions 
of Shaftesbury which Mandeville attacks in detail will be found repre- 
sented in the extracts from Characteristics; see above, pages 223-230.] 

AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF MORAL VIRTUE 

All untaught animals are only solicitous of pleasing them- 
selves, and naturally follow the bent of their own incKnations, 
"without considering the good or harm that from their being 
pleased will accrue to others. This is the reason that in the wild 
state of nature those creatures are fittest to live peaceably to- 
gether in great numbers that discover the least of understand- 
ing, and have the fewest appetites to gratify; and consequently 
no species of animals is, without the curb of government, less 
capable of agreeing long together in multitudes than that of 
man. Yet such are his quahties, whether good or bad I shall 
not determine, that no creature besides himself can ever be 
made sociable; but being an extraordinary selfish and head- 
strong, as well as cunning animal, however he may be sub- 
dued by superior strength, it is impossible by force alone 
to make him tractable, and receive the improvements he is 
capable of. 

The chief thing, therefore, which lawgivers and other wise 
men that have labored for the establishment of society, have 
endeavored, has been to make the people they were to govern 
beUeve that it was more beneficial for everybody to conquer 
than indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the public 



246 BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

than what seemed his private interest. As this has always been 
a very difficult task, so no wit or eloquence has been left untried 
to compass it, and the moralists and philosophers of all ages 
employed their utmost skill to prove the truth of so useful an 
assertion. But whether mankind would have ever believed it or 
not, it is not likely that anybody could have persuaded them to 
disapprove of their natural inclinations, or prefer the good of 
others to their own, if at the same time he had not showed them 
an equivalent to be enjoyed as a reward for the violence which 
by so doing they of necessity must commit upon themselves. 
Those that have undertaken to civilize mankind were not igno- 
rant of this; but being unable to give so many real rewards as 
would satisfy all persons for every individual action, they were 
forced to contrive an imaginary one, that as a general equiva- 
lent for the trouble of self-denial should serve on all occasions, 
and, without costing anything either to themselves or others, 
be yet a most acceptable recompense to the receivers. 

They thoroughly examined all the strength and frailties of 
our nature, and, observing that none were either so savage as 
not to be charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to 
bear contempt, justly concluded that flattery must be the most 
powerful argument that could be used to human creatures. 
Making use of this bewitching engine, they extolled the excel- 
lency of our nature above other animals, and, setting forth 
with unbounded praises the wonders of our sagacity and vast- 
ness of understanding, bestowed a thousand encomiums on the 
rationality of our souls, by the help of which we were capable 
of performing the most noble achievements. Having by this 
artful way of flattery insinuated themselves into the hearts of 
men, they began to instruct them in the notions of ,lienQr and 
shame; representing the one as the worst of all evils, and the 
other as the highest good to which mortals could aspire. Which 
being done, they laid before them how unbecoming it was the 
dignity of such sublime creatures to be solicitous about grati- 
fying those appetites which they had in common with brutes, 
and at the same time unmindful of those higher qualities 
that gave them the preeminence over all visible things. They 
indeed confessed that those impulses of nature were very press- 
ing, that it was troublesome to resist, and very difficult wholly 
to subdue them. But this they only used as an argument to 



THE FABLE OF THE BEES 247 

demonstrate how glorious the conquest of them was, on the one 
hand, and how scandalous, on the other, not to attempt it. 

To introduce, moreover, an emulation amongst men, they ^ 
divided the whole species into two classes, vastly differing from 
one another. The one consisted of abject, low-minded people, 
that, always hunting after immediate enjoyment, were wholly 
incapable of self-denial, and, without regard to the good of 
others, had no higher aim than their private advantage; such as, 
being enslaved by voluptuousness, yielded without resistance 
to every gross desire, and made no use of their rational faculties 
but to heighten their sensual pleasure. These vile groveling 
wretches, they said, were the dross of their kind, and, having 
only the shape of men, differed from brutes in nothing but 
their outward figure. But the other class was made up of lofty, 
high-spirited creatures, that, free from sordid selfishness, es- 
teemed the improvements of the mind to be their fairest pos- 
sessions, and, setting a true value upon themselves, took no 
delight but in embellishing that part in which their excellency 
consisted; such as, despising whatever they had in common 
with irrational creatures, opposed by the help of reason their 
most violent inclinations, and, making a continual war with 
themselves to promote the peace of others, aimed at no less 
than the public welfare and the conquest of their own passion, 

Fortior est qui se quam qui fortissima vincit }' 

Mcenia.^ 

These they called the true representatives of their sublime 
species, exceeding in worth the first class by more degrees than 
that itself was superior to the beasts of the field. . . . 

This was (or at least might have been) the manner after 
which savage man was broke ; from whence it is evident that the 
first rudiments of morahty, broached by skillful politicians to 
render men useful to each other as well as tractable, were 
chiefly contrived that the ambitious might reap the more bene- 
fit from, and govern vast numbers of, them, with the greater 
ease and security. This foundation of politics being once laid, 
it is impossible that man should long remain uncivilized; for 
even those who only strove to gratify their appetites, being 
continually crossed by others of the same stamp, could not but 
observe that, whenever they checked their inclinations, or but 

' "He who conquers himself is stronger than he who overcomes the strongest walls." 



248 BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

followed them with more circumspection, they avoided a world 
of troubles, and often escaped many of the calamities that 
generally attended the too eager pursuit after pleasure. 

( < „ First, they received, as well as others, the benefit of those 
actions that were done for the good of the whole society, and 
consequently could not forbear wishing well to those of the su- 

ry perior class that performed them. Secondly, the more intent 
they were in seeking their own advantage without regard to 
others, the more they were hourly convinced that none stood 
so much in their way as those that were most like themselves. 
It being the interest, then, of the very worst of them, more 
than any, to preach up public-spiritedness, that they might 
reap the fruits of the labor and self-denial of others, and at the 
same time indulge their own appetites with less disturbance, 
they agreed with the rest to call everything which, without re- 
gard to the public, man should commit to gratify any of his 
appetites, vice, if in that action there could be observed the 
least prospect that it might either be injurious to any of the 
society or ever render himself less serviceable to others; and to 
give the name of virtue to every performance by which man, 
contrary to the impulse of nature, should endeavor the benefit 
of others or the conquest of his own passions, out of a rational 
ambition of being good. . . . 

It is visible, then, that it was not any heathen rehgion or 
other idolatrous superstition that first put man upon crossing 
his appetites and subduing his dearest inclinations, but the skill- 
ful management of wary politicians; and the nearer we search 
into human nature, the more we shall be convinced that the 
moral virtues are the political offspring which Flattery begot 
upon Pride. 

; There is no man, of what capacity or penetration soever, 
that is wholly proof against the witchcraft of flattery, if artfully 
performed and suited to his abilities. Children and fools will 
swallow personal praise, but those that are more cunning must 
be managed with greater circumspection, and the more general 
the flattery is, the less it is suspected by those it is leveled at. 
What you say in commendation of a whole town is received 
with pleasure by all the inhabitants; speak in commendation 
of letters in general, and every man of learning will think him- 
self in particular obliged to you. You may safely praise the 



THE FABLE OF THE BEES 249 

employment a man is of, or the country he was born in, because 
you give him an opportunity of screening the joy he feels upon 
his own account, under the esteem which he pretends to have 
for others. 

It is common among cunning men, that understand the 
power which flattery has upon pride, when they are afraid they 
shall be imposed upon, to enlarge, though much against their 
conscience, upon the honor, fair deahng, and integrity of the 
family, country, or sometimes the profession of him they sus- 
pect; because they know that men often will change their reso- 
lution, and act against their inclination, that they may have 
the pleasure of continuing to appear, in the opinion of some, 
what they are conscious not to be in reality. Thus sagacious 
moraHsts draw men like angels, in hopes that the pride at least 
of some will put them upon copying after the beautiful originals 
which they are represented to be. 

When the incomparable Sir Richard Steele, in the usual ele- 
gance of his easy style, dwells on the praises of his sublime spe- 
cies, and with all the embellishments of rhetoric sets forth the 
excellency of human nature, it is impossible not to be charmed 
with his happy turns of thought and the politeness of his ex- 
pressions. But, though I have been often moved by the force 
of his eloquence, and ready to swallow the ingenious sophistry 
with pleasure, yet I could never be so serious but, reflecting on 
his artful encomiums, I thought on the tricks made use of by 
the women that would teach children to be mannerly. When an 
awkward girl, before she can either speak or go, begins after 
many entreaties to make the first rude essays of curtesying, the 
nurse falls in an ecstasy of praise. "There 's a delicate curtesy! 
O fine Miss! There 's a pretty lady! Mamma! Miss can make 
a better curtesy than her sister Molly!" The same is echoed 
over by the maids, whilst mamma almost hugs the child to 
pieces; only Miss Molly, who, being four years older, knows how 
to make a very handsome curtesy, wonders at the perverseness 
of their judgment, and, swelling with indignation, is ready to 
cry at the injustice that is done her, till, being whispered in the 
ear that it is only to please the baby, and that she is a woman, 
-he grows proud at being let into the secret, and, rejoicing at the 
superiority of her understanding, repeats what has been said 
with large additions, and insults over the weakness of her sister, 



250 BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

whom all this while she fancies to be the only bubble among 
them. These extravagant praises would, by any one above the 
capacity of an infant, be called fulsome flatteries, and (if you 
will) abominable lies; yet experience teaches us that by the 
help of such gross encomiums young misses will be brought to 
make pretty curtesies and behave themselves womanly, much 
sooner and with less trouble than they would without them. 
'T is the same with boys, whom they '11 strive to persuade that 
all fine gentlemen do as they are bid, and that none but beggar 
boys are rude or dirty their clothes; nay, as soon as the wild 
brat with his untaught fist begins to fumble for his hat, the 
mother, to make him pull it off, tells him before he is two years 
old that he is a man, and, if he repeats that action when she 
desires him, he 's presently a captain, a Lord Mayor, a king, or 
something higher if she can think of it, till, egged on by the 
force of praise, the little urchin endeavors to imitate man as 
well as he can, and strains all his faculties to appear what his 
shallow noddle imagines he is believed to be. 

The meanest wretch puts an inestimable value upon himself, 
and the highest wish of the ambitious man is to have all the 
world, as to that particular, of his opinion. So that the most 
insatiable thirst after fame that ever hero was inspired with, was 
never more than an ungovernable greediness to engross the 
esteem and admiration of others in future ages as well as his 
own; and (what mortification soever this truth might be to the 
second thoughts of an Alexander or a Caesar) the great recom- 
pense in view, for which the most exalted minds have with so 
much alacrity sacrificed their quiet, health, sensual pleasures, 
and every inch of themselves, has never been anything else but 
the breath of man, the aerial coin of praise. . . . 

A SEARCH INTO THE NATURE OF SOCIETY 

The generality of moralists and philosophers have hitherto 
agreed that there could be no virtue without self-denial; but a 
late author, who is now much read by men of sense, is of a con- 
trary opinion, and imagines that men, without any trouble or 
violence upon themselves, maybe naturally virtuous. He seems 
to require and expect goodness in his species, as we do a sweet 
taste in grapes and China oranges, of which, if any of them are 
sour, we boldly pronounce that they are not come to that per- 



THE FABLE OF THE BEES 251 

fection their nature is capable of. This noble writer (for it is the 
Lord Shaftesbury I mean, in his Characteristics) fancies that, 
as man is made for society, so he ought to be born with a kind 
affection to the whole of which he is a part, and a propensity to 
seek the welfare of it. In pursuance of this supposition, he calls 
every action performed with regard to the public good, virtuous, 
and all selfishness, wholly excluding such a regard, vice. In 
respect to our species he looks upon virtue and vice as perma- 
nent realities, that must ever be the same in all countries and 
ages, and imagines that a man of sound understanding, by fol- 
lowing the rules of good sense, may not only find out that pul- 
chrum et honestum both in morality and the works of art and 
nature, but likewise govern himself by his reason with as much 
ease and readiness as a good rider manages a well-taught horse 
by the bridle. 

The attentive reader, who perused the foregoing part of this 
book, will soon perceive that two systems cannot be more oppo- 
site than his Lordship's and mine. His notions, I confess, are 
generous and refined; they are a high compliment to human- 
kind, and capable, by the help of a Httle enthusiasm, of inspiring 
us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of our 
exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true ! I would 
not advance thus much if I had not already demonstrated, in 
almost every page of this treatise, that the solidity of them is 
inconsistent with our daily experience. But, to leave not the 
least shadow of an objection that might be made unanswered, 
I design to expatiate on some things which hitherto I have but 
slightly touched upon, in order to convince the reader, not only 
that the good and amiable quahties of man are not those that 
make him beyond other animals a sociable creature, but, more- 
over, that it would be utterly impossible either to raise any 
multitudes into a populous, rich, and flourishing nation, or, 
when so raised, to keep and maintain them in that condition, 
without the assistance of what we call evil, both natural and 
moral. 

The better to perform what I have undertaken, I shall pre- 
viously examine into the reality of the pulchrum et honestum^ 
the TO KaXov that the ancients have talked of so much. The 
meaning of this is to discuss whether there be a real worth and 
excellency in things, a preeminence of one above another, 



252 BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

which everybody will always agree to that well understands 
them, or that there are few things, if any, that have the same 
esteem paid them, and which the same judgment is passed upon, 
in all countries and all ages. When we first set out in quest of 
this intrinsic worth, and find one thing better than another, and 
a third better than that, and so on, we begin to entertain great 
hopes of success ; but when we meet with several things that are 
all very good or all very bad, we are puzzled, and agree not al- 
ways with ourselves, much less with others. There are different 
faults, as well as beauties, that, as modes and fashions alter, 
and men vary in their tastes and humors, will be differently 
admired or disapproved of. 

Judges of painting will never disagree in opinion, when a fine 
picture is compared to the daubing of a novice ; but how strangely 
have they differed as to the works of eminent masters ! There 
are parties among connoisseurs, and few of them agree in their 
esteem as to ages and countries; and the best pictures bear not 
always the best prices: a noted original will be ever worth more 
than any copy that can be made of it by an unknown hand, 
though it should be better. The value that is set on paintings 
depends not only on the name of the master, and the time of his 
age he drew them in, but likewise in a great measure on the 
scarcity of his works, and — what is still more unreasonable — 
the quality of the persons in whose possession they are, as well 
as the length of time they have been in great families. And if 
the cartoons now at Hampton Court were done by a less famous 
hand than that of Raphael, and had a private person for their 
owner, who would be forced to sell them, they would never 
yield the tenth part of the money which, with all their gross 
faults, they are now esteemed to be worth. . . . 

In morals there is no greater certainty. Plurality of wives is 
odious among Christians, and all the wit and learning of a great 
genius in defense of it has been rejected with contempt; but 
polygamy is not shocking to a Mahometan. What men have 
learned from their infancy enslaves them, and the force of cus- 
tom warps nature, and at the same time imitates her in such a 
manner that it is often difficult to know which of the two we are 
influenced by. In the East formerly sisters married brothers, 
and it was meritorious for a man to marry his mother. Such al- 
liances are abominable; but it is certain that, whatever horror 



THE FABLE OF THE BEES 253 

we conceive at the thoughts of them, there is nothing in nature 
repugnant against them, but what is built upon mode and cus- 
tom. A reUgious Mahometan, that has never tasted any spirit- 
uous Hquor, and has often seen people drunk, may receive as 
great an aversion against wine as another with us, of the least 
morality and education, may have against marrying his sister, 
and both imagine that their antipathy proceeds from nature. 
Which is the best religion? is a question that has caused more 
mischief than all other questions together. Ask it at Peking, at 
Constantinople, and at Rome, and you'll receive three distinct 
answers extremely different from one another, yet all of them 
equally positive and peremptory. Christians are well assured 
of the falsity of the pagan and Mahometan superstitions; as to 
this point there is a perfect union and concord among them ; but 
inquire of the several sects they are divided into, Which is the 
true Church of Christ? and all of them will tell you it is theirs, 
and, to convince you, go together by the ears. 

It is manifest, then, that the hunting after this pulchrum et 
honestum is not much better than a wild-goose chase that is but 
little to be depended upon. But this is not the greatest fault I 
find with it. The imaginary notions that men may be virtuous 
without self-denial are a vast inlet to hypocrisy, which being 
once made habitual, we must not only deceive others, but like- 
wise become altogether unknown to ourselves; and in an in- 
stance I am going to give, it will appear how, for want of duly 
examining himself, this might happen to a person of quality of 
parts and erudition, — one every way resembUng the author 
of the Characteristics himself. 

A man that has been brought up in ease and affluence, if he 
is of a quiet, indolent nature, learns to shun everything that is 
troublesome, and chooses to curb his passions more because of 
the inconveniencies that arise from the eager pursuit after plea- 
sure, and the yielding to all the demands of our inclinations, 
than any dislike he has to sensual enjoyments. And it is possi- 
ble that a person educated under a great philosopher/ who was 
a mild and good-natured as well as able tutor, may in such 
happy circumstances have a better opinion of his inward state 
than it really deserves, and believe himself virtuous because his 
passions lie dormant. He may form fine notions of the social 

> John Locke (in Shaftesbury's case). 



254 BERNARD MANDEVILLE 

virtues, and the contempt of death, write well of them in his 
closet, and talk eloquently of them in company; but you shall 
never catch him fighting for his country, or laboring to retrieve 
any national losses. A man that deals in metaphysics may 
easily throw himself into an enthusiasm, and really believe that 
he does not fear death, whilst it remains out of sight. But 
should he be asked why, having this intrepidity, either from 
nature or acquired by philosophy, he did not follow arms when 
his country was involved in war; or, when he saw the nation 
daily robbed by those at the helm, and the affairs of the exche- 
quer perplexed, why he did not go to court, and make use of all 
his friends and interests to be a Lord Treasurer, that by his 
integrity and wise management he might restore the public 
oredit, — it is probable he would answer that he loved retire- 
ment, had no other ambition than to be a good man, and never 
aspired to have any share in the government, or, that he hated 
all flattery and slavish attendance, the insincerity of courts and 
bustle of the world. I am wilhng to beUeve him; but may not a' 
man of an indolent temper and unactive spirit say — and be sin- 
cere in — all this, and at the same time indulge his appetites with- 
out being able to subdue them, though his duty summons him to 
it? Virtue consists in action, and whoever is possessed of this 
social love and kind affection to his species, and by his birth or 
quality can claim any post in the public management, ought not 
to sit still when he can be serviceable, but exert himself to the 
utmost for the good of his fellow-subjects. Had this noble per- 
son been of a warlike genius or a boisterous temper, he would 
have chose another part in the drama of life, and preached a 
quite contrary doctrine; for we are ever pushing our reason 
which way soever we feel passion to draw it, and self-love 
pleads to all human creatures for their different views, still 
furnishing every individual with arguments to justify their 
inclinations. . . . 






LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

LETTERS 

lAn unauthorized edition of Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
was published in 1763, and these were republished, with additions, at 
various dates, to the time of the edition of Mr. Moy Thomas, 1861. The 
letters from the East (written while Lady Mary's husband was English 
ambassador to the Porte) were given by her to a Rev. Mr. Sowden; and 
another copy (not identical) she gave to Mr. Molesworth. It has been 
suspected that they were edited before being copied, or in some cases 
made from diary notes. The Sowden text, as printed by Mr. Thomas, is 
used here; the family letters were also printed by him from original MSS. 
The Countess of Bute was Lady Mary's daughter, and her constant cor- 
respondent during her long residence on the Continent, 1739-62.] 

TO MR. POPE 

Adrianople, April i, 1717. ■ 

I DARE say you expect at least something very new in this 
letter, after I have gone a journey not undertaken by any Chris- 
tian for some hundred years. The most remarkable accident 
that happened to me, was my being very near overturned into 
the Hebrus; and, if I had much regard for the glories that one's 
name enjoys after death, I should certainly be sorry for having 
missed the romantic conclusion of swimming down the same 
river in which the musical head of Orpheus repeated verses so 
many ages since. . . . Who knows but some of your bright wits 
might have found it a subject affording many poetical turns, and 
have told the world, in an heroic elegy, that, 

As equal were our souls, so equal were our fates? 

I despair of ever having so many fine things said of me, as so 
extraordinary a death would have given occasion for. 

I am at this present writing in a house situated on the banks 
of the Hebrus, which runs under my chamber window- My 
garden is full of tall cypress-trees, upon the branches of which 
several couple of true turtles are saying soft things to one an- 
other from morning till night. How naturally do boughs and 
vows come into my head at this minute! And must you not 



256 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

confess, to my praise, that 't is more than ordinary discretion 
that can resist the wicked suggestions of poetry, in a place 
where truth, for once, furnishes all the ideas of pastoral? The 
summer is already far advanced in this part of the world; and, 
for some miles round Adrianople, the whole ground is laid out 
in gardens, and the banks of the river set with rows of fruit- 
trees, under which all the most considerable Turks divert them- 
selves every evening ; — not with walking, — that is not one of 
their pleasures; but a set party of them choose out a green spot, 
where the shade is very thick, and there they spread a carpet, 
on which they sit drinking their coffee, and generally attended 
by some slave with a fine voice, or that plays on some instru- 
ment. . . . The young lads generally divert themselves with 
making garlands for their favorite lambs, which I have often 
seen, painted and adorned with flowers, lying at their feet while 
they sung or played. It is not that they ever read romances, 
but these are the ancient amusements here, and as natural to 
them as cudgel-playing and football to our British swains; the 
softness and warmth of the climate forbidding all rough exer- 
cises, which were never so much as heard of amongst them, and 
naturally inspiring a laziness and aversion to labor, which the 
great plenty indulges. ... I no longer look upon Theocritus 
as a romantic writer; he has only given a plain image of the way 
of life amongst the peasants of his country, who, before oppres- 
sion had reduced them to want, were, I suppose, all employed 
as the better sort of them are now. I don't doubt, had he been 
born a Briton, his Idylliums had been filled with descriptions 
of threshing and churning, both which are unknown here, the 
corn being all trod out by oxen, and butter (I speak it with 
sorrow) unheard of. 

I read over your Homer here with an infinite pleasure, and 
find several little passages explained, that I did not before en- 
tirely comprehend the beauty of; many of the customs, and 
much of the dress then in fashion, being yet retained; and I 
don't wonder to find more remains here of an age so distant, 
than is to be found in any other country, the Turks not taking 
that pains to introduce their .own manners as has been gene- 
rally practiced by other nations. that imagine themselves more 
polite. 



LETTERS 257 

TO THE COUNTESS OF MAR 

Pera of Constantinople, March 10, 1718. 

. . . We travelers are in very hard circumstances. If we say 
nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull, and we 
have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed 
at as fabulous and romantic, not allowing for the difference of 
ranks,' which afford difference of company, more curiosity, or the 
change of customs, that happen every twenty years in every 
country. But people judge of travelers exactly with the same 
candor, good nature, and impartiahty, they judge of their 
neighbors upon all occasions. For my part, if I live to return 
amongst you, I am so well acquainted with the morals of all 
my dear friends and acquaintance, that I am resolved to tell 
them nothing at all, to avoid the imputation (which their char- 
ity would certainly incline them to) of my telling too much. 
But I depend upon your knowing me enough to believe what- 
ever I seriously assert for truth, though I give you leave to be 
surprised at an account so new to you. 

But what would you say if I told you that I have been in a 
harem where the winter apartment was wainscoted with inlaid 
work of mother-of-pearl, ivory of different colors, and olive 
wood, exactly like the little boxes you have seen brought out of 
this country; and those rooms designed for summer, the walls 
all crusted with japan china, the roofs gilt, and the floors spread 
with the finest Persian carpets? Yet there is nothing more 
true; such is the palace of my lovely friend, the fair Fatima, 
whom I was acquainted with at Adrianople. I went to visit her 
yesterday; and, if possible, she appeared to me handsomer than 
before. She met me at the door of her chamber, and, giving me 
her hand with the best grace in the world, — "You Christian 
ladies," said she, with a smile that made her as handsome as an 
angel, " have the reputation of inconstancy, and I did not expect, 
whatever goodness you expressed for me at Adrianople, that I 
should ever see you again. But I am now convinced that I have 
really the happiness of pleasing you ; and if you knew how I 
speak of you amongst our ladies, you would be assured that you 
do me justice if you think me your friend." She placed me in 
the corner of the sofa, and I spent the afternoon in her conver- 
sation, with the greatest pleasure in the world. 



258 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

The Sultana Hafiten is, what one would naturally expect to 
find a Turkish lady, willing to oblige, but not knowing how to 
go about it; and it is easy to see in her manner that she has lived 
secluded from the world. But Fatima has all the politeness and 
good breeding of a court, with an air that inspires at once re- 
spect and tenderness; and now I understand her language, I 
find her wit as engaging as her beauty. She is very curious after 
the manners of other countries, and has not that partiality for 
her own, so common to Httle minds. ... I assured her that, if 
all the Turkish ladies were like her, it was absolutely necessary 
to confine them from public view, for the repose of mankind; 
and proceeded to tell her what a noise such a face as hers would 
make in London or Paris. " I can't believe you," replied she, 
agreeably. ' ' If beauty was so much valued in your country as 
you say, they would never have suffered you to leave it." Per- 
haps, dear sister, you laugh at my vanity in repeating this com- 
pliment; but I only do it as I think it very well turned, and 
give it you as an instance of the spirit of her conversation. 

TO THE ABBE CONTI 

Constantinople, May 19, 17 18. 
. . . Thus you see, sir, these people are not so unpolished as 
we represent them. 'T is true their magnificence is of a different 
taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opin- 
ion they have a right notion of life, while they consume it in 
music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, — while we are tor- 
menting ourselves with some scheme of politics, or studying 
some science to which we can never attain, or, if we do, cannot 
persuade people to set that value upon it we do ourselves. 'T is 
certain what we feel and see is properly (if anything is properly) 
our own; but the good of fame, the folly of praise, hardly pur- 
chased, and, when obtained, a poor recompense for loss of time 
and health. We die, or grow old and decrepit, before we can 
reap the fruit of our labors. Considering what short-lived, weak 
animals men are, is there any study so beneficial as the study 
of present pleasure? I dare not pursue this theme; perhaps I 
have already said too much, but I depend upon the true know- 
ledge you have of my heart. I don't expect from you the insipid 
railleries I should sufTer from another, in answer to this letter. 
You know how to divide the idea of pleasure from that of vice, 



LETTERS 259 

and they are only mingled in the heads of fools. But I allow you 
to laugh at me for the sensual declaration that I had rather be a 
rich efendi, with all his ignorance, than Sir Isaac Newton with 
all his knowledge. 

TO THE COUNTESS OF POMFRET 

[March, 1739.] 

... At the last warm debate in the House of Lords, it was 
unanimously resolved there should be no crowd of unnecessary 
auditors; consequently the fair sex were excluded, and the gal- 
lery destined to the sole use of the House of Commons. Not- 
withstanding which determination, a tribe of dames resolved to 
show on this occasion that neither men nor laws could resist 
them. These heroines were Lady Huntingdon, the Duchess of 
Queensberry, the Duchess of Ancaster, Lady Westmoreland, 
Lady Cobham, Lady Charlotte Edwin, Lady Archibald Hamil- 
ton and her daughter, Mrs. Scott, and Mrs. Pendarves, and 
Lady Frances Saunderson. I am thus particular in their names, 
since I look upon them to be the boldest assertors, and most re- 
signed sufferers for liberty, I ever read of. They presented them- 
selves at the door at nine o'clock in the morning, where Sir 
William Saunderson respectfully informed them the Chancellor 
had made an order against their admittance. The Duchess of 
Queensberry, as head of the squadron, pished at the ill-breeding 
of a mere lawyer, and desired him to let them upstairs privately. 
After some modest refusals, he swore by G — he would not let 
them in. Her Grace, with a noble warmth, answered, by G — 
they would come in, in spite of the Chancellor and the whole 
House. This being reported, the Peers resolved to starve them 
out; an order was made that the doors should not be opened 
until they had raised their siege. These Amazons now showed 
themselves qualified for the duty even of foot-soldiers; they 
stood there till five in the afternoon, every now and then play- 
ing volleys of thumps, kicks, and raps against the door, with so 
much violence that the speakers in the House were scarce 
heard. When the Lords were not to be conquered by this, the 
two duchesses (very well apprised of the use of stratagems in 
war) commanded a dead silence of half an hour; and the Chan- 
cellor, who thought this a certain proof of their absence — the 
Commons also being very impatient to enter — gave order for 



26o LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

the opening of the door; upon which they all rushed in, pushed 
aside their competitors, and placed themselves in the front 
rows of the gallery. They stayed there till after eleven, when 
the House rose; and during the debate gave applause, and 
showed marks of dislike, not only by smiles and winks (which 
have always been allowed in these cases), but by noisy laughs 
and apparent contempts, — which is supposed the true reason 
why poor Lord Hervey spoke miserably. I beg your pardon, 
dear madam, for this long relation; but 'tis impossible to be 
short on so copious a subject; and you must own this action 
very well worthy of record, and I think not to be paralleled in 
history, ancient or modern. 

TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE 

[1748.] 

It is very true,"my dear child, we cannot now maintain a fam- 
ily with the product of a flock, though I do not doubt the present 
sheep afford as much wool and milk as any of their ancestors, 
and it is certain our natural wants are not more numerous than 
formerly; but the world is past its infancy, and will no longer 
be contented with spoon meat. Time has added great improve- 
ments, but those very improvements have introduced a train of 
artificial necessities. A collective body of men make a gradual 
progress in understanding, like that of a single individual. When 
I reflect on the vast increase of useful, as well as speculative, 
knowledge the last three hundred years has produced, and that 
the peasants of this age have more conveniences than the first 
emperors of Rome had any notion of, I imagine we are now ar- 
rived at that period which answers to fifteen. I cannot think 
we are older, when I recollect the many palpable follies which 
are still (ahnost) universally persisted in. I place that of war 
amongst the most glaring, being fully as senseless as the boxing 
of schoolboys; and whenever we come to man's estate, — per- 
haps a thousand years hence, — I do not doubt it will appear as 
ridiculous as the pranks of unlucky lads. Several discoveries 
will then be made, and several truths made clear, of which we 
have now no more idea than the ancients had of the circulation 
of the blood, or the optics of Sir I. Newton. 



LETTERS , 261 

January 28, 1753. 

You have given me a great deal of satisfaction by your ac- 
count of your eldest daughter. I am particularly pleased to 
hear she is a good arithmetician ; it is the best proof of under- 
standing; the knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinc- 
tions between us and the brutes. . . . Every woman endeavors 
to breed her daughter a fine lady, qualifying her for a station in 
which she will never appear, and at the same time incapacitat- 
ing her for that retirement to which she is destined. Learning, if 
she has a real taste for it, will not only make her contented, but 
happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any 
pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret 
the loss of expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she 
can be amused with an author in her closet. To render this 
amusement extensive, she should be permitted to learn the 
languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so many 
years in mere learning of words; this is no objection to a girl, 
whose time is not so precious; she cannot advance herself in any 
profession, and has therefore more hours to spare; and as you 
say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably employed 
this way. There are two cautions to be given on this subject: 
first, not to think herself learned when she can read Latin, or 
even Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles 
of learning than learning itself, as may be observed in many 
schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the 
most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge consists in 
knowing things, not words. I would wish her no further a lin- 
guist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that 
are often corrupted, and always injured, by translations. Two 
hours' application every morning will bring this about much 
sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough 
besides to run over the EngHsh poetry, which is a more impor- 
tant part of a woman's education than it is generally supposed. 
Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses, 
which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been 
stolen from Mr. Waller. I remember, when I was a girl, I saved 
one of my companions from destruction, who communicated to 
me an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had a natural 
good taste, she observed the lines were not so smooth as Prior's 
or Pope's, but had rnore thought and spirit than any of theirs. 



262 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

She was wonderfully delighted with such a demonstration of 
her lover's sense and passion, and not a little pleased with her 
own charms, that had force enough to inspire such elegancies. 
In the midst of this triumph I showed her that they were taken 
from Randolph's poems, and the unfortunate transcriber was 
dismissed with the scorn he deserved. To say truth, the poor 
plagiary was very unlucky to fall into my hands ; that author, 
being no longer in fashion, would have escaped any one of less 
universal reading than myself. You should encourage your 
daughter to talk over with you what she reads; and, as you are 
very capable of distinguishing, take care she does not mistake 
pert folly for wit and humor, or rhyme for poetry, which are the 
common errors of young people, and have a train of ill conse- 
quences. The second caution to be given her (and which is most 
absolutely necessary) is to conceal whatever learning she at- 
tains, with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness 
or lameness. The parade of it can only serve to draw on her the 
envy, and consequently the most inveterate hatred, of all he and 
she fools, which will certainly be at least three parts in four of 
all her acquaintance. 

March 6, 1753. 

I cannot help writing a sort of apology for my last letter, fore- 
seeing that you will think it wrong, or at least Lord Bute will 
be extremely shocked at the proposal of a learned education for 
daughters, which the generality of men believe as great a pro- 
fanation as the clergy would do if the laity should presume to 
exercise the functions of the priesthood. I desire you would 
take notice, I would not have learning enjoined them as a task, 
but permitted as a pleasure, if their genius leads them naturally 
to it. . . . Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find 
full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care 
in the planting, but as much daily sohcitude in cherishing, as 
exotic fruits and flowers. The vices and passions — which I am 
afraid are the natural product of the soil — demand perpetual 
weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge, every branch 
of which is entertaining, and the longest life is too short for the 
pursuit of it; which, though in some regards confined to very 
strait limits, leaves still a vast variety of amusements to those 
capable of tasting them, which is utterly impossible for those 
blinded by prejudices which are the certain effect of an igno- 



LETTERS 263 

rant education. My own was one of the worst in the world, 
being exactly the same as Clarissa Harlowe's; her pious Mrs. 
Norton so perfectly resembling my governess, who had been 
nurse to my mother, I could almost fancy the author was ac- 
quainted with her. She took so much pains, from my infancy, 
to fill my head with superstitious tales and false notions, it was 
none of her fault I am not at this day afraid of witches and hob- 
gobhns, or turned Methodist. Almost all girls are bred after 
this manner. I believe you are the only woman (perhaps I 
might say person) that never was either frighted or cheated into 
anything by your parents. ... I could give many examples 
of ladies whose ill conduct has been very notorious, which has 
been owing to that ignorance which has exposed them to idle- 
ness, which is justly called the mother of mischief. There is 
nothing so Hke the education of a woman of quality as that of a 
prince; they are taught to dance, and the exterior part of what is 
called good breeding, which, if they attain, they are extraordi- 
nary creatures in their kind, and have all the accomphshments 
required by their directors. The same characters are formed by 
the same lessons, — which inclines me to think (if I dare say it) 
that nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no 
more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinc- 
tion of capacity. 

Lovere, [1755]. 

I have promised you some remarks on all the books I have 
received. I believe you would easily forgive my not keeping my 
word; however, I shall go on. The Rambler is certainly a strong 
misnomer; he always plods in the beaten road of his predeces- 
sors, following the Spectator — with the same pace a pack- 
horse would do a hunter — in the style that is proper to lengthen a 
paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the public, 
which is sa}dng a great deal in their favor. There are numbers of 
both sexes who never read anything but such productions, and 
cannot spare time from doing nothing to go through a sixpenny 
pamphlet. Such gentle readers may be improved by a moral 
hint which, though repeated over and over from generation to 
generation, they never heard in their Hves. I should be glad to 
know the name of this laborious author. H. Fielding has given 
a trne picture of himself and his first wife in the characters of 
Mr. and Mrs. Booth, ^ some compliments to his own figure ex- 

^ In Amelia. 



264 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 

cepted; and I am persuaded several of the incidents he men- 
tions are real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive 
Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels. All these sort 
of books have the same fault, which I cannot easily pardon, 
being very mischievous. They place a merit in • extravagant 
passions, and encourage young people to hope for impossible 
events, to draw them out of the misery they chose to plunge 
themselves into, expecting legacies from unknown relations, 
and generous benefactors to distressed virtue, as much out of 
nature as fairy treasures. Fielding has really a fund of true 
humor, and was to be pitied at his first entrance into the world, 
having no choice, as he said himself, but to be a hackney writer 
or a hackney coachman. His genius deserved a better fate; but 
I cannot help blaming that continued indiscretion, to give it the 
softest name, that has run through his life, and I am afraid still 
remains. . > . The general want of invention which reigns 
among our writers inclines me to think it is not the natural 
growth of our island, which has not sun enough to warm the 
imagination. The press is loaded by the servile flock of imi- 
tators. . . . Since I was born, no original has appeared ex- 
cepting ^Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe, have 
approached nearer to his excellences, if not forced by necessity 
to pubHsh without correction, and throw many productions into 
the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have 
been got without money, or money without scribbling. The 
greatest virtue, justice, and the most distinguishing preroga- 
tive of mankind, writing, when duly executed, do honor to 
human nature; but when degenerated into trades, are the most 
contemptible ways of getting bread. 

September 22, 1755. 

... I am sorry for H. Fielding's death, not only as I shall 
read no more of his writings, but I believe he lost more than 
others, as no man enjoyed life more than he did. . . . There 
was a great similitude between his character and that of Sir 
Richard Steele. He had the advantage both in learning and 
— in my opinion — genius; they both agreed in wanting money 
in spite of all their friends, and would have wanted it, if their 
hereditary lands had been as extensive as their imagination; 
yet each of them was so formed for happiness, it is pity he was 
not immortal. 



^ C>-w --ys« 



ALEXANDER POPE 
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 

1725 

[This Preface was written for Pope's edition of Shakespeare, — the sec- 
ond of the eighteenth-century editions. The extract is chiefly from the 
first part, beginning with the third paragraph. With the concluding 
paragraph, which well represents the judgment of Shakespeare held at 
this period, compare the simile in Johnson's Preface, page 385, below.] 

... If ever any author deserved the name of an original, 
it was Shakespeare. Homer himself drew not his art so imme- 
diately from the fountains of Nature; it proceeded through 
Egyptian strainers and channels, and came to him not without 
some tincture of the learning, or some cast of the models, of 
those before him. The poetry of Shakespeare was inspiration 
indeed: he is not so much an imitator, as an instrument, of 
Nature; and 'tis not so just to say that he speaks from her, as 
that she speaks through him. 

His characters are so much Nature herself, that 'tis a sort of 
injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those 
of other poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that 
they received them from one another, and were but multipliers 
of the same image: each picture, like a mock rainbow, is but the 
reflection of a reflection. But every single character in Shake- 
speare is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is as im- 
possible to find any two alike; and such as from their relation or 
affinity appear in any respect most to be twins, will upon com- 
parison be found remarkably distinct. To this life and variety 
of character we must add the wonderful preservation of it, 
which is such, throughout his plays, that had all the speeches 
been printed without the very names of the persons, I believe 
one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker. 

The power over our passions was never possessed in a more 
eminent degree, or displayed in so different instances. Yet all 
along there is seen no labor, no pains to raise them ; no prepara- 
tion to guide our guess to the effect, or be perceived to lead 



266 ALEXANDER POPE 

toward it; but the heart swells, and the tears burst out, Just at 
the proper places. We are surprised the moment we weep, and 
yet upon reflection find the passion so just, that we should be 
surprised if we had not wept, and wept at that very moment. 

How astonishing is it, again, that the passions directly oppo- 
site to these, laughter and spleen, are no less at his command ! 
that he is not more a master of the great than of the ridiculous 
in human nature; of our noblest tendernesses than of our vain- 
est foibles; of our strongest emotions than of our idlest sensa- 
tions! 

Nor does he only excel in the passions. In the coolness of re- 
flection and reasoning he is fuH as admirable. His sentiments 
are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon 
every subject, but, by a talent very peculiar, something be- 
tween penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular 
point on which the bent of each argument turns, or the force of 
each motive depends. This is perfectly amazing, from a man of 
no education or experience in those great and public scenes of life 
which are usually the subject of his thoughts; so that he seems 
to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through 
human nature at one glance, and to be the only author that 
gives ground for a very new opinion : that the philosopher, and 
even the man of the world, may be born, as well as the poet. 

It must be owned that with all these great excellencies he has 
almost as great defects; and that as he has certainly written 
better, so he has perhaps written worse, than any other. But I 
think I can in some measure account for these defects, from sev- 
eral causes and accidents, without which it is hard to imagine 
that so large and so enlightened a mind could ever have been 
susceptible of them. That all these contingencies should unite 
to his disadvantage seems to me almost as singularly unlucky, 
as that so many various (nay contrary) talents should meet in 
one man was happy and extraordinary. 

It must be allowed that stage poetry, of all other, is more 
particularly leveled to please the populace, and its success more 
immediately depending upon the common suffrage. One cannot 
therefore wonder if Shakespeare, having at his first appearance 
no other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistence, di- 
rected his endeavors solely to hit the taste and humor that then 
prevailed. The audience was generally composed of the meaner 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 267 

sort of people, and therefore the images of life were to be drawn 
from those of their own rank ; accordingly we find that not only 
our author's, but almost all the old comedies, have their scene 
among tradesmen and mechanics, and even their historical 
plays strictly follow the common old stories or vulgar tradi- 
tions of that kind of people. In tragedy nothing was so sure 
to surprise and cause admiration, as the most strange, unex- 
pected, and consequently most unnatural, events and incidents, 
the most exaggerated thoughts, the most verbose and bombast 
expression, the most pompous rh3^mes and thundering versifi- 
cation. In comedy nothing was so sure to please as mean buf- 
foonery, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. 
Yet even in these our author's wit buoys up and is borne above 
his subject. His genius in those low parts is like some prince of 
a romance, in the disguise of a shepherd or peasant; a certain 
greatness and spirit now and then break out, which manifest his 
higher extraction and qualities. 

It may be added that not only the common audience had no 
notion of the rules of writing, but few even of the better sort 
piqued themselves upon any great degree of knowledge or nicety 
that way, till Ben Jonson, getting possession of the stage, 
brought critical learning into vogue. And that this was not 
done without difficulty may appear from those frequent lessons 
(and indeed almost declamations) which he was forced to pre- 
fix to his first plays, and put into the mouth of his actors, the 
Grex, Chorus, etc., to remove the prejudices and inform the 
judgment of his hearers. Till then, our authors had no thoughts 
of writing on the model of the ancients; their tragedies were 
only histories in dialogue, and their comedies followed the 
thread of any novel as they found it, no less imphcitly than if it 
had been true history. 

To judge, therefore, of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rules, is 
like trying a man by the laws of one country who acted under 
those of another. He writ to the people, and writ at first with- 
out patronage from the better sort, and therefore without aims 
of pleasing them; without assistance or advice from the learned, 
as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among 
them; without that knowledge of the best models, the ancients, 
to inspire him with an emulation of them; in a word, without 
any views of reputation, and of what poets are pleased to caU 



268 ALEXANDER POPE 

immortality; some or all of which have encouraged the vanity 
or animated the ambition of other writers. 

Yet it must be observed that, when his performances had 
merited the protection of his Prince, and when the encourage- 
ment of the court had succeeded to that of the town, the works 
of his riper years are manifestly raised above those of his former. 
The dates of his plays sufficiently evidence that his productions 
improved in proportion to the respect he had for his auditors. 
And I make no doubt this observation will be found true in 
every instance, were but editions extant from which we might 
learn the exact time when every piece was composed, and 
whether writ for the town or the court. 

Another cause, and no less strong than the former, may be 
deduced from our author's being a player, and forming himself 
first upon the judgments of that body of men whereof he was a 
member. They have ever had a standard to themselves, upon 
other principles than those of Aristotle. As they live by the 
majority, they know no rule but that of pleasing the present 
humor, and complying with the wit in fashion, a consideration 
which brings all their judgment to a short point. Players are 
just such judges of what is right, as tailors are of what is grace- 
ful. And in this view it will be but fair to allow that most of our 
author's faults are less to be ascribed to his wrong judgment as 
a poet, than to his right judgment as a player. . . . 
'-\ I will conclude by saying of Shakespeare that, with all his 
faults, and with all the irregularity of his drama, one may look 
upon his works, in comparison of those that are more finished 
and regular, as upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic archi- 
tecture, compared with a neat modern building. The latter is 
more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and 
more solemn. It must be allowed that in one of these there are 
materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the 
greater variety, and much the nobler apartments, though we 
are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth pas- 
sages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater rev- 
erence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed, and 
unequal to its grandeur. 



COLLEY GIBBER 

AN APOLOGY FOR THE LIFE OF COLLEY GIBBER 

1740 

[The Apology was written after Gibber's retirement from active work 
on the stage in 1733, and published in his seventieth year. The extracts 
are from chapters VTII and XIV. 

[theatrical reform] 

Our theatrical writers were not only accused of immorality, 
but profaneness; many flagrant instances of which were col- 
lected and published by a nonjuring clergyman, Jeremy Collier, 
in his View of the Stage, etc., about the year 1697. However 
just his charge against the authors that then wrote for it might 
be, I cannot but think his sentence against the stage itself is 
unequal ; reformation he thinks too mild a treatment for it, and 
is therefore for laying his axe to the root of it. If this were to be 
a rule of judgment for offenses of the same nature, what might 
become of the pulpit, where many a seditious and corrupted 
teacher has been known to cover the most pernicious doctrine 
with the mask of religion? This puts me in mind of what the 
noted Jo. Hains, the comedian, a fellow of a wicked wit, said 
upon this occasion; who being asked what could transport Mr. 
Collier into so blind a zeal for a general suppression of the stage, 
when only some particular authors had abused it, whereas the 
stage, he could not but know, was generally allowed, when rightly 
conducted, to be a delightful method of mending our morals, — 
" For that reason," replied Hains; " Collier is by profession a 
moral-mender himself, and two of a trade, you know, can never 
agree." 

The authors of The Old Bachelor and of The Relapse^ were 
those whom Collier most labored to convict of immorality, to 
which they severally pubHshed their reply. The first seemed 
too much hurt to be able to defend himself, and the other felt 
liim ;.o little that his wit only laughed at his lashes. 

- • Congreve and Vanbrugh. 



270 COLLEY GIBBER 

My first play of The Fool in Fashion, too, being then in a 
course of success, perhaps for that reason only this severe au- 
thor thought himself obliged to attack it; in which, I hope, he 
has shown more zeal than justice. His greatest charge against 
it is that it sometimes uses the word " Eaith" as an oath, in the 
dialogue. But if Faith may as well signify our given word, or 
credit, as our religious belief, why might not his charity have 
taken it in the less criminal sense? Nevertheless, Mr. ColHer's 
book was upon the whole thought so laudable a work that King 
WiUiam, soon after it was pubHshed, granted him a nolo prose- 
gwi, when he stood answerable to the law for his having absolved 
two cruninals, just before they were executed for high treason. 
And it must be farther granted that his calling our dramatic 
writers to this strict account had a very wholesome effect upon 
those who writ after this time. They were now a great deal 
more upon their guard; indecencies were no longer writ; and by 
degrees the fair sex came to fill the boxes on the first day of a 
new comedy, without fear or censure. But the Master of the 
Revels, who then Hcensed all plays for the stage, assisted this 
reformation with a more zealous severity than ever. He would 
strike out whole scenes of a vicious or immoral character, though 
it were visibly shown to be reformed or punished. A severe in- 
stance of this kind falling upon myself may be an excuse for my 
relating it. When Richard the Third, as I altered it from Shake- 
speare, came from his hands to the stage, he expunged the whole 
first act, without sparing a fine of it. This extraordinary stroke 
of a Sic volo occasioned my applying to him for the small indul- 
gence of a speech or two, that the other four acts might limp on 
with a little less absurdity. No! he had not leisure to consider 
what might be separately inoffensive. He had an objection to 
the whole act, and the reason he gave for it was, that the dis- 
tresses of King Henry the Sixth, who is killed by Richard in the 
first act, would put weak people too much in mind of King 
James, then living in France; — a notable proof of his zeal for 
the government! Those who have read either the play or the 
history, I dare say, will think he strained hard for the parallel. 
In a word, we were forced for some few years to let the play 
take its fate, with only four acts, divided into five; by the loss 
of so considerable a limb may one not modestly suppose it was 
robbed of at least a fifth part of that favor it afterwards met 



APOLOGY 271 

with? For though this first act was at last recovered, and made 
the play whole again, yet the relief came too late to repay me for 
the pains I had taken in it. Nor did I ever hear that this zealous 
severity of the Master of the Revels was afterwards thought 
justifiable. . . . 

[addison's "cato"] 

From this time to the year 171 2, my memory (from which 
repository alone, every article of what I write is collected) has 
nothing worth mentioning, till the first acting of the tragedy of 
Cato. As to the play itself, it might be enough to say that the 
author and the actors had their difi'erent hopes of fame and 
profit amply answered by the performance; but as its success 
was attended with remarkable consequences, it may not be 
amiss to trace it from its several years' concealment in the 
closet to the stage. 

In 1703, nine years before it was acted, I had the pleasure of 
reading the first four acts (which was all of it then written) pri- 
vately with Sir Richard Steele. It may be needless to say it was 
impossible to lay them out of my hand till I had gone through 
them, or to dwell upon the dehght his friendship to the author 
received, upon my being so warmly pleased with them. But 
my satisfaction was as highly disappointed, v/hen he told me, 
whatever spirit Mr. Addison had shown in his writing it, he 
doubted he would never have courage enough to let his Cato 
stand the censure of an EngHsh audience; that it had only been 
the amusement of his leisure hours in Italy, and was never in- 
tended for the stage. This poetical diffidence Sir Richard him- 
self spoke of with some concern, and in the transport of his 
imagination could not help saying, " Good God! what a part 
would Betterton make of Cato!" But this was seven years be- 
fore Betterton died, and when Booth — who afterwards made 
his fortune by acting it — was in his theatrical minority. 

In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, when our national 
politics had changed hands, the friends of Mr. Addison then 
thought it a proper time to animate the pubhc with the senti- 
ments of Cato. In a word, their importunities were too warm to 
be resisted, and it was no sooner finished than hurried to the 
stage, in April, 171 2, at a time when three days a week were 
usually appointed for the benefit plays of particular actors. 



272 COLLEY GIBBER 

But a work of that critical importance was to make its way 
through all private considerations; nor could it possibly give 
place to a custom which the breach of could very little prejudice 
the benefits, that on so unavoidable an occasion were (in part, 
though not wholly) postponed. It was therefore (Mondays 
excepted) acted every day for a month to constantly crowded 
houses. As the author had made us a present of whatever profits 
he might have claimed from it, we thought ourselves obliged to 
spare no cost in the proper decorations of it. Its coming so late 
in the season to the stage proved of particular advantage to the 
sharing actors, because the harvest of our annual gains was 
generally over before the middle of March, many select audi- 
ences being then usually reserved in favor to the benefits of pri- 
vate actors, which fixed engagements naturally abated the 
receipts of the days before and after them ; but this unexpected 
after-crop of Cato largely supplied to us those deficiencies, and 
was almost equal to two fruitful seasons in the same year; at 
the close of which the three managing actors found themselves 
each a gainer of thirteen hundred and fifty pounds. 

But to return to the first reception of this play from the pub- 
lic. Although Cato seems plainly written upon what are called 
Whig principles, yet the Tories of that time had sense enough 
not to take it as the least reflection upon their administration ; 
but, on the contrary, they seemed to brandish and vaunt their 
approbation of every sentiment in favor of liberty, which by a 
public act of their generosity was carried so high, that one day 
while the play was acting they collected fifty guineas in the 
boxes, and made a present of them to Booth, with this compU- 
ment: "For his honest opposition to a perpetual dictator, and 
his dying so bravely in the cause of liberty." ... 



'\>^ -J^ uv./^_.*~A*' Y^v 



U\y\./^_.*~A>' Xf 



HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT 
BOLINGBROKE, 

[Bolingbroke's writings, as published during his lifetime, were chiefly 
political; but his notes and essays on philosophy and religion were well 
known in MS. (several of them being written for Pope and used by him, 
as in the Essay on Man). The essays here represented were published by 
Mallet after the author's death, the "Use of Retirement" in the same 
book with "A Plan for a General History" and "Reflections on Exile," the 
Letter to Pope with "A Letter to Sir W. Wyndham" and "Reflections on 
the State of the Nation." The extracts well represent certain aspects of 
eighteenth-century deism; e. g., the curious fashion in which its spokes- 
men attacked the established faith and organization of the church, while 
disclaiming any desire to abolish or supplant it.] 

OF THE TRUE USE OF RETIREMENT AND STUDY 

1752 

.... There is a strange distrust of human reason in every hu- 
man institution. This distrust is so apparent that an habitual 
submission to some authority or other is forming in us from our 
cradles; that principles of reasoning, and matters of fact, are 
inculcated in our tender minds, before we are able to exercise 
that reason; and that, when we are able to exercise it, we are 
either forbid or frightened from doing so, even on things that 
are themselves the proper objects of reason, or that are deliv- 
ered to us upon an authority whose sufficiency or insufficiency 
is so most evidently. 

On many -subjects, such as the general laws of natural reli- 
gion, and tlie general rules of society and good poKcy, men of all 
countries and languages, who cultivate their reason, judge alike. 
The same premises have led them to the same conclusions, and 
so, following the same guide, they have trod in the same path. 
At least the differences are small, easily reconciled, and such as 
could not of themselves contradistinguish nation from nation, 
religion from ] eligion, and sect from sect. How comes it, then, 
that there are other points on which the most opposite opinions 
are entertains ;i, and some of these with so much heat and fury 



274 LORD BOLINGBROKE 

that the men on one side of the hedge will die for the affirmative, 
and the men on the other for the negative? . . . Look narrowly 
into it, and you will find that the points agreed on, and the points 
disputed, are not proportionable to the common sense and gen- 
eral reason of mankind. Nature and truth are the same every- 
where, and reason shows them everywhere alike. But the accf- 
dental and other causes, which give rise and growth to opinions, 
both in speculation and practice, are of infinite variety; and 
wherever these opinions are once confirmed by custom and 
propagated by education, various, inconsistent, contradictory 
as they are, they all pretend (and all their pretences are backed 
by pride, by passion, and by interest) to have reason, or reve- 
lation, or both, on their side; though neither reason nor revela- 
tion can be possibly on the side of more than one and may be 
possibly on the side of none. 

Thus it happens that the people of Thibet are Tartars and 
idolaters, that they are Turks and Mahometans at Constanti- 
nople, ItaHans and Papists at Rome; and how much soever 
education may be less confined, and the means of knowledge 
more attainable, in France and our own country, yet thus it 
happens in great measure that Frenchmen and Roman Catho- 
lics are bred at Paris, and Englishmen and Protestants at 
London. For men, indeed, properly speaking, are bred no- 
where; every one thinks the system, as he speaks the language, 
of his country. At least there are few that think, and none that 
act, in any country, according to the dictates of pure unbiased 
reason; unless they may be said to do so, when reason directs 
them to speak and act according to the system of their couiltry 
or sect, at the same time as she leads them to think according 
to that of nature and truth. 

Thus the far greatest part of mankind appears reduced to a 
lower state than other animals, in that very respect on account 
of which we claim so great superiority over them; because ill-' 
stinct, that has its due effect, is preferable to reason that ha^ 
not. I suppose in this place, with philosophers vnd the vulgar, 
that which I am in no wise ready to affirm — (hat other ani- 
mals have no share of human reason; for, let me s ly by the way, 
it is much more likely other animals should sha '^ the human, 
than that man should sharethe divine reason, wh'i is affirmed. 
But, supposing our monopoly of reason, would not your Lord- 



TRUE USE OF RETIREMENT AND STUDY 275 

ship choose to walk upon four legs, to wear a long tail, and to be 
called a beast, with the advantage of being determined by irre- 
sistible and unerring instinct to those truths that are necessary 
to your well-being, rather than to walk on two legs, to wear no 
tail, and to be honored with the title of man, at the expense of 
deviating from them perpetually? Instinct acts spontaneously 
whenever its action is necessary, and directs the animal accord- 
ing to the purpose for which it was implanted in him. Reason 
is a nobler and more extensive faculty, for it extends to the un- 
necessary as well as to the necessary, and to satisfy our curios- 
ity as well as our wants; but reason must be excited, or she 
will remain inactive. She must be left free, or she will conduct 
us wrong, and carry us farther astray from her own precincts 
than we should go without her help. In the first case we have 
no sufficient guide; and in the second, the more we employ our 
reason the more unreasonable we are. 

Now if all this be so, if reason has so little, and ignorance, 
passion, interest, and custom so much to do, in forming our 
opinions and our habits, and in directing the whole conduct of 
human life, is it not a thing desirable by every thinking man, to 
have the opportunity, indulged to so few by the course of acci- 
dents, - — the opportunity secum esse, et secum vivere, of living 
some years, at least, to ourselves and for ourselves, in a state of 
freedom, under the laws of reason, instead of passing our whole 
time in a state of vassalage under those of authority and cus- 
tom? Is it not worth our while to contemplate ourselves, and 
others, and all the things of this world, once before we leave 
them, through the medium of pure, and — if I may say so — 
undefiled reason? Is it not worth our while to approve or con- 
demn, on our own authority, what we receive in the beginning 
of life on the authority of other men, who were not then better 
able to judge for us than we are now to judge for ourselves? 

All men are taught their opinions, at least on the most impor- 
tant subjects, by rote, and are bred to defend them with ob- 
stinacy. They maybe taught true opinions; but whether true 
or false, the same zeal for them, and the same attachment to 
them, is everywhere inspired alike. The Tartar believes as 
heartily that the soul of Foe inhabits in his Dairo, as the Chris- 
tian beheves the hypostatic union, or any article in theAthana- 
sian Creed. Now this may answer the ends of society in some 



276 LORD BOLINGBROKE 

respects, and do well enough for the vulgar of all ranks; but it is 
not enough for the man who cultivates his reason, who is able 
to think, and who ought to think, for himself. To such a man, 
every opinion that he has not himself framed, or examined 
strictly, and then adopted, will pass for nothing more than 
what it really is, — the opinion of other men, which may be 
true or false, for aught he knows. And this is a state of uncer- 
tainty in which no such man can remain, with any peace of 
mind, concerning those things that are of greatest importance 
to us here, and may be so hereafter. He will make them, there- 
fore, the objects of his first and greatest attention. If he has 
lost time, he will lose no more. And when he has acquired all 
the knowledge he is capable of acquiring on these subjects, he 
will be the less concerned whether he has time to acquire any 
farther. Should he have passed his life in the pleasures or busi- 
ness of the world, whenever he sets about this work, he will 
soon have the advantage over the learned philosopher. For he 
will soon have secured what is necessary to his happiness, and 
may sit down in the peaceful enjoyment of that knowledge, or 
proceed with greater advantage and satisfaction to the acqui- 
sition of new knowledge ; whilst the other continues his search 
after things that are in their nature — to say the best of them 
— hypothetical, precarious, and superfluous. . . . 
Y In short, my lord, he who retires from the world with a reso- 
lution of employing his leisure in the first place to re-examine 
and settle his opinions, is inexcusable if he does not begin with 
those that are most important to him, and if he does not deal 
honestly by himself. To deal honestly by himself, he must ob- 
serve the rule I have insisted upon, and not suffer the delusions 
of the world to follow him into his retreat. Every man's reason 
is every man's oracle; this oracle is best consulted in the silence 
of retirement; and when we have so consulted, whatever the 
decision be, whether in favor of our prejudices or against them, 
we must rest satisfied, since nothing can be more certain than 
this, that he who follows that guide in the search of truth, as 
that was given him to lead him to it, will have a much better 
plea to make, whenever or wherever he may be called to ac- 
count, than he who has resigned himself, either deUberately 
or inadvertently, to any authority upon earth. 
When we have done this, concerning God, ourselves, and 



A LETTER TO ALEXANDER POPE 277 

other men, — concerning the relations in which we stand to ^ 
Him and to them, — the duties that result from these relations, I 
• — and the positive will of the Supreme Being, whether revealed 
to us in a supernatural, or discovered by the right use of our 
reason in a natural way, — we have done the great business of 
our lives. Our lives are so sufficient for this, that they afford us 
time for more, even when we begin late; especially if we pro- 
ceed in every other inquiry by the same rule. To discover error 
in axioms, or in first principles grounded on facts, is like the 
breaking of a charm. The enchanted castle, the steep rock, the 
burning lake disappear; and the paths that lead to truth, which 
we imagined to be so long, so embarrassed, and so difiicult, 
show as they are, — short, open, and easy. . . . 



A LETTER ADDRESSED TO ALEXANDER POPE 

ESQ. 

1753 

. . . To be contented to know things as God has mad'e us capa- 
ble of knowing them, is then a first principle necessary to secure 
us from falling into error; and if there is any subject upon which 
we should be most on our guard against error, it is surely that 
which I have called here the First Philosophy. God is hid from 
us in the majesty of His nature, and the httle we discover of Him 
must be discovered by the light that is reflected from His works. 
Out of this light, therefore, we should never go in our inquiries 
and reasonings about His nature. His attributes, and the order 
of His providence. And yet upon these subjects men depart the 
furthest from it; nay, they who depart the furthest are the best 
heard by the bulk of mankind. The less men know, the more 
they beHeve that they know. Belief passes in their minds for 
knowledge, and the very circumstances which should beget 
doubt produce increase of faith. Every glittering apparition 
that is pointed out to them in the vast wild of imagination, 
passes for a reality; and the more distant, the more confused, 
the more incomprehensible it is, the more sublime it is esteemed. 
He who should attempt to shift these scenes of airy vision for 
those of real knowledge might expect to be treated with scorn 
and anger by the whole theological and metaphysical tribe, the 



278 LORD BOLINGBROKE 

masters and the scholars. He would be despised as a plebeian 
philosopher, and railed at as an infidel. It would be sounded 
high that he debased human nature, which has a cognation — 
so the Reverend and learned Doctor Cudworth calls it — with 
the divine; — that the soul of man, immaterial and immortal 
by its nature, was made to contemplate higher and nobler ob- 
jects than this sensible world, and even than itself, since it was 
made to contemplate God, and to be united to Him. In such 
clamor as this, the voice of truth and reason would be drowned ; 
and, with both of them on his side, he who opposed it would 
make many enemies and few converts. . . . Prudence forbids 
me, therefore, to write as I think to the world, whilst friendship 
forbids me to write otherwise to you. I have been a martyr 
of faction in poKtics, and have no vocation to be so in philo- 
sophy. 

... If the religion we profess contained nothing more than arti- 
cles of faith and points of doctrine clearly revealed to us in the 
Gospel, we might be obliged to renounce our natural freedom 
of thought in favor of this supernatural authority. But since 
it is notorious that a certain order of men, who call themselves 
the Church, have been employed to make and propagate a 
theological system of their own, which they call Christianity, 
from the days of the apostles, and even from these days inclus- 
ively, it is our duty to examine and analyze the whole, that we 
may distinguish what is divine from what is human, — adhere 
to the first simplicity, and ascribe to the last no more authority 
than the word of man deserves. . . . 

I neither expect nor desire to see any public revision made of 
the present system of Christianity. I should fear an attempt to 
alter the established religion as much as they who have the 
most bigot attachment to it, and for reasons as good as theirs, 
though not entirely the same. I speak only of the duty of every 
private man to examine for himself, which would have an 
immediate good efi'ect relatively to himself, and might have 
in time a good effect relatively to the public, since it would 
dispose the minds of men to a greater indifference about theo- 
logical disputes, which are the disgrace of Christianity and have 
been the plagues of the world. . . . He who examines on such 
principles as these, which are conformable to truth and reason, 
may lay aside at once the immense volumes of fathers and 



A LETTER TO ALEXANDER POPE 279 

councils, of schoolmen, casuists, and controversial writers, 
which have perplexed the world so long. Natural religion will 
be to such a man no longer intricate; revealed religion will be no 
longer mysterious, nor the word of God equivocal. Clearness 
and precision are two great excellences of human laws; how 
much more should we expect to find them in the law of God? 
They have been banished from thence by artificial theology; 
and he who is desirous to find them must banish the professors 
of it from his counsels, instead of consulting them. He must 
seek for genuine Christianity with that simplicity of spirit with 
which it is taught in the Gospel by Christ himself, . . . 

I cannot conclude my discourse on this occasion better than 
by putting you in mind of a passage you quoted to me once, 
with great applause, from a sermon of Foster, and to this effect: 
"Where mystery begins, rehgion ends." The apophthegm 
pleased me much, and I was glad to hear such a truth from any 
pulpit, since it shows an incHnation, at least, to purify Chris- 
tianity from the leaven of artificial theology, which consists 
principally in making things that are very plain mysterious, and 
in pretending to make things that are impenetrably mysterious 
very plain. If you continue still of the same mind, I shall have 
no excuse to make to you for what I have written, and shall 
write. Our opinions coincide. If you have changed your mind, 
think again, and examine further. You will find that it is the 
njodest, not the presumptuous, inquirer, who makes a real and 
safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows na- 
ture and nature's God; that is, he follows God in His works and 
in His word, nor presumes to go further, by metaphysical and 
theological commentaries of his own invention, than the two 
texts, if I may use this expression, carry him very evidently. 
They who have done otherwise, and have affected to discover, 
by a supposed science derived from tradition, or taught in the 
schools, more than they who have not such science can discover, 
concerning the nature, moral and physical, of tbe Supreme 
Being, and concerning the secrets of His providence, have been 
either enthusiasts or knaves, — or else of that numerous tribe 
who reason well very often, but reason always on some arbitrary 
assumption. Much of this character belonged to the heathen 
divines; and it is, in all its parts, peculiarly that of the ancient 
fathers and modern doctors of the Christian Church. . . . All 



M 



280 LORD BOLINGBROKE 

these men, both heathens and Christians, appeared gigantic 
forms through the false medium of imagination and habitual 
prejudice, but were, in truth, as arrant dwarfs in the know- 
ledge to which they pretended, as you and I and all the sons of 
Adam. The former, however, deserved some excuse; the latter 
none. . . . 



SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

THE HISTORY OF CLARISSA HARLOWE 
1747-48 

PREFACE 

The following history is given in a series of letters, written 
principally in a double yet separate correspondence, between 
two young ladies of virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable 
friendship for each other, and writing not merely for amuse- 
ment, but upon the most interesting subjects, in which every 
private family, more or less, may find itself concerned ; and be- 
tween two gentlemen of free lives, one of them glorying in his 
talents for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the 
other, in confidence, all the secret purposes of an intriguing 
head and resolute heart. But here it will be proper to observe, 
for the sake of such as may apprehend hurt to the morals of 
youth from the more freely written letters, that the gentlemen, 
though professed libertines as to the female sex, and making it 
one of their wicked maxims to keep no faith with any of the in- 
dividuals of it who are thrown into their power, are not, how- 
ever, either infidels or scoffers, nor yet such as think themselves 
freed from the observance of those other moral duties which 
bind man to man. On the contrary, it will be found in the pro- 
gress of the work that they very often make such reflections 
upon each other, and each upon himself and his own actions, as 
reasonable beings must make, who disbelieve not a future state 
of rewards and punishments, and who one day propose to re- 
form, — one of them actually reforming, and by that means 
giving an opportunity to censure the freedoms which fall from 
the gayer pen and lighter heart of the other. And yet that other, 
although, in unbosoming himself to a select friend, he discover 
wickedness enough to entitle him to general detestation, pre- 
serves a decency, as well in his images as in his language, which 
is not always to be found in the works of some of the most cele- 
brated modern writers, whose subjects and characters have less 
warranted the hberties they have taken. _, 



282 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

In the letters of the two young ladies, it is presumed will be 
found not only the highest exercise of a reasonable and practi- 
cable friendship, between minds endowed with the noblest 
principles of virtue and religion, but occasionally interspersed 
such delicacy of sentiments, particularly with regard to the 
other sex, — such instances of impartiality, each freely, as a 
fundamental principle of their friendship, blaming, praising, 
and setting right the other, — as are strongly to be recom- 
mended to the observation of the younger part (more specially) 
of female readers. 

The principal of these two young ladies is proposed as an 
exemplar to her sex. Nor is it any objection to her being so, 
that she is not in all respects a perfect character. It was not 
only natural, but it was necessary, that she should have some 
faults, were it only to show the reader how laudably she could 
mistrust and blame herself, and carry to her own heart, divested 
of self-partiaKty, the censure which arose from her own convic- 
tions, and that even to the acquittal of those, because revered 
characters, whom no one else would acquit, and to whose much 
greater faults her errors were owing, and not to a weak or re- 
proachable heart. As far as is consistent with human frailty, 
and as far as she could be perfect, considering the people she 
had to deal with, and those with whom she was inseparably 
connected, she is perfect. To have been impeccable must have 
left nothing for the Divine Grace and a purified state to do, and 
carried our idea of her from woman to angel. As such is she 
often esteemed by the man whose heart was so corrupt that he 
could hardly believe human nature capable of the purity which, 
on every trial or temptation, shone out in hers. 

Besides the four principal persons, several others are intro- 
duced, whose letters are characteristic; and it is presumed that 
there will be found in some of them — but more especially in 
those of the chief character among the men, and the second 
character among the women — such strokes of gayety, fancy, 
and humor, as will entertain and divert, and at the same time 
both warn and instruct. 

All the letters are written while the hearts of the writers must 
be supposed to be wholly engaged in their subjects (the events 
at the time generally dubious) ; so that they abound not only 
with critical situations, but with what may be called instan- 



I CLARISSA HARLOWE 283 

taneous descriptions and reflections, proper to be brought home 
to the breast of the youthful reader; as also with affecting con- 
versations, many of them written in the dialogue or dramatic 
way. " Much more lively and affecting," says one of the princi- 
pal characters, " must be the style of those who write in the 
height of a present distress, the mind tortured by the pangs of 
uncertainty, — the events then hidden in the womb of fate, — 
than the dry, narrative, unanimated style of a person relating 
difficulties and dangers surmounted, can be, — the relater per- 
fectly at ease, and, if himself unmoved by his own story, not 
Hkely greatly to affect the reader." 

What will be found to be more particularly aimed at in the 
following work is, — to warn the inconsiderate and thoughtless 
of the one sex, against the base arts and designs of specious 
contrivers of the other, — to caution parents against the undue 
exercise of their natural authority over their children in the 
great article of marriage, — to warn children against preferring 
a man of pleasure to a man of probity upon that dangerous but 
too commonly received notion that "a reformed rake makes 
the best husband," — but, above all, to investigate the highest 
and most important doctrines not only of morality but of 
Christianity, by showing them thrown into action in the con- 
duct of the worthy characters, while the unworthy, who set those 
doctrines at defiance, are condignly, and, as may be said, conse- 
quentially punished. 

From what has been said, considerate readers will not enter 
upon the perusal of the piece before them as if it were designed 
only to divert and amuse. It will probably be thought tedious 
to all such as dip into it, expecting a light novel, or transitory 
romance, and look upon story in it (interesting as that is gener- 
ally allowed to be) as its sole end, rather than as a vehicle to the 
instruction. . . . 

[the death of Clarissa] 

Mr. Belford to Robert Lovelace, Esq. 

I may as well try to write; since, were I to go to bed, I shall 
not sleep. I never had such a weight of grief upon my mind in 
my life, as upon the demise of this admirable woman, whose 
soul is now rejoicing in the regions of light. You may be glad to 
know the particulars of her happy exit. I will try to proceed, 



284 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

for all is hush and still, — the family retired, but not one of 
them, and least of all her poor cousin, I dare say, to rest. At 
four o'clock, as I mentioned in my last, I was sent for down, and 
as thou usedst to like my descriptions, I will give thee the woful 
scene that presented itself to me as I approached the bed. The 
Colonel was the first that took my attention, kneeling on the side 
of the bed, the lady's right hand in both his, which his face cov- 
ered, bathing it with his tears; although she had been comforting 
him, as the women since told me, in elevated strains but broken 
accents. 

On the other side of the bed sat the good widow, her face 
overwhelmed with tears, leaning her head against the bed's 
head in a most disconsolate manner; and, turning her face to me 
as soon as she saw me, " O Mr. Belford!" cried she, with folded 
hands, " the dear lady — " A heavy sob permitted her not to 
say more. Mrs. Smith, with clasped fingers and uplifted eyes, 
as if imploring help from the only Power which could give it, was 
kneeling down at the bed's feet, tears in large drops trickling 
down her cheeks. Her nurse was kneeling between the widow 
and Mrs. Smith, her arms extended. In one hand she held an 
ineffectual cordial, which she had just been offering to her dying 
mistress. Her face was swollen with weeping, though used to 
such scenes as this, and she turned her eyes towards me, as if 
she called upon me by them to join in the helpless sorrow, — a 
fresh stream bursting from them as I approached the bed. 

The maid of the house, with her face upon her folded arms, 
as she stood leaning against the wainscot, more audibly ex- 
pressed her grief than any of the others. The lady had been 
silent a few minutes, and speechless, as they thought, moving 
her lips without uttering a word; one hand, as I said, in her 
cousin's. But when Mrs. Lovick, on my approach, pronounced 
my name, '' O Mr. Belford!" said she, with a faint inward 
voice, but very distinct nevertheless, " now — now" (in broken 
periods she spoke) " I bless God for his mercies to his poor crea- 
ture. All will soon be over — a few — a very few moments — 
will end this strife — and I shall be happy! Comfort here, sir" 
(turning her head to the Colonel), " comfort my cousin — see! 
the blame — able kindness — he would not wish me to be 
happy — so soon ! " Here she stopped for two or three minutes, 
earnestly looking upon him. Then, resuming, "My dearest 



CLARISSA HARLOWE 285 

cousin," said she, "be comforted. What is dying but the com- 
mon lot? The mortal frame may seem to labor — but that is 
all ! It is not so hard to die as I believed it to be ! The prepara- 
tion is the difficulty — I bless God I have had time for that — ■ 
the rest is worse to beholders than to me — I am all blessed 
hope — hope itself." She looked what she said, a sweet smile 
beaming over her countenance. 

After a short silence, " Once more, my dear cousin," said she, 
but still in broken accents, "commend me most dutifully to my 
father and mother." There she stopped; and then, proceeding, 
"To my sister, to my brother, to my uncles; and tell them I 
bless them with my parting breath — for all their goodness to 
me — even for their displeasure, I bless them — most happy has 
been to me my punishment here I Happy indeed ! " She was si- 
lent for a few moments, lifting up her eyes, and the hand her 
cousin held not between his. Then " Death," said she, " where 
is thy sting! " (the words I remember to have heard in the burial 
service read over my uncle and poor Belton); and, after a 
pause, " It is good for me that I was afflicted! " Words of Scrip- 
ture, I suppose. Then, turning towards us, who were lost in 
speechless sorrow, "O dear, dear gentlemen," said she, "you 
know not what foretastes — what assurances — " And there 
she again stopped, and looked up, as if in a thankful rapture, 
sweetly smiling. Then, turning her head towards me, " Do 
you, sir, tell your friend that I forgive him! And I pray God to 
forgive him!" Again pausing, and lifting up her eyes, as if 
praying that He would. " Let him know how happily I die; and 
that such as my own, I wish to be his last hour." She was again 
silent for a few moments; and then, resuming, "My sight 
fails me! Your voices only — " (for we both applauded her 
Christian, her divine frame, though in accents as broken as her 
own) " and the voice of grief is alike in all. Is not this Mr. Mor- 
den's hand? " — pressing one of his with that he had just let go. 
" Which is Mr. Belford's? " — holding out the other. I gave her 
mine. " God Almighty bless you both!" said she, " and make 
you both — in your last hour — for you must come to this — 
happy as I am." 

She paused again, her breath growing shorter, and after a few 
minutes, "And now, my dearest cousin, give me your hand — • 
nearer — still nearer — " drawing it towards her; and she 



286 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

pressed it with her dying lips. "God protect you, dear, dear 
sir — and once more receive my best and most grateful thanks 

— and tell my dear Miss Howe — and vouchsafe to see and to 
tell my worthy Norton — she will be one day, I fear not, though 
now lowly in her fortunes, a saint in heaven — tell them both 
that I remember them with thankful blessings in my last mo- 
ments ! — and pray God to give them happiness here for many, 
many years, for the sake of their friends and lovers, and a heav- 
enly crown hereafter; and such assurances of it as I have, 
through the all-satisfying merits of my blessed Redeemer." 

Her sweet voice and broken periods methinks still fill my 
ears, and never will be out of my memory. After a short silence, 
in a more broken and faint accent — "And you, Mr. Belford," 

— pressing my hand, "may God preserve you, and make you 
sensible of all your errors. — You see, in me, how all ends; — 
may you be — " And down sank her head upon the pillow, she 
fainting away, and drawing from us her hands. We thought she 
was then gone, and each gave way to a violent burst of grief. 
But, soon showing signs of returning life, our attention was 
again engaged; and I besought her, when a little recovered, to 
complete in my favor her half-pronounced blessing. She waved 
her hand to us both, and bowed her head six several times, as 
we have since recollected, as if distinguishing every person 
present, not forgetting the nurse and the maid-servant, — the 
latter having approached the bed, weeping, as if crowding in for 
the divine lady's last blessing; and she spoke faltering and in- 
wardly — "Bless — bless — bless — you all — and now — and 
now — " (holding up her almost lifeless hands for the last time) 
"come — oh come — blessed Lord Jesus!" And with these 
words, the last but half pronounced, expired ; — such a smile, 
such a charming serenity overspreading her sweet face at the 
instant, as seemed to manifest her eternal happiness already 
begun. O Lovelace! — But I can write no more. 

T resume my pen to add a few lines. 

While warm, though pulseless, we pressed each her hand with 
our lips, and then retired into the next room. We looked at 
each other, with intent to speak, but as if one motion governed, 
as one cause affected both, we turned away silent. The Colonel 
sighed as if his heart would burst; at last, his face and hands 



SIR CHARLES GRANDISON 287 

uplifted, his back towards me, — "Good heaven!" said he to 
himself. "Support me! And is it thus, O flower of nature!" 
Then, pausing, "And must we no more — never more! — My 
blessed, blessed cousin!" — uttering some other words, which 
his sighs made inarticulate. And then, as if recollecting him- 
self, "Forgive me, sir! Excuse me, Mr. Belford!" And, slid- 
ing by me, "Anon I hope to see you, sir." And down stairs he 
went, and out of the house, leaving me a statue. When I re- 
covered, I was ready to repine at what I then called an unequal 
dispensation, forgetting her happy preparation, and still happier 
departure, and that she had but drawn a common lot, triumph- 
ing in it, and leaving behind her every one less assured of hap- 
piness, though equally certain that the lot would one day be 
their own. She departed exactly at forty minutes after six 
o'clock, as by her watch on the table. 

And thus died Miss Clarissa Harlowe, in the blossom of her 
youth and beauty; and who, her tender years considered, has 
not left behind her her superior in extensive knowledge and 
watchful prudence, nor hardly her equal for unblemished vir- 
tue, exemplary piety, sweetness of manners, discreet generos- 
ity, and true Christian charity; and these all set off by the most 
graceful modesty and humihty, yet on all proper occasions 
manifesting a noble presence of mind, and true magnanimity, 
so that she may be said to have been not only an ornament to 
her sex, but to human nature. 

THE HISTORY OF SIR CHARLES GRANDISON, BART. 

1753 

PREFACE 

The editor of the following letters takes leave to observe that 
he has now, in this publication, completed the plan that was the 
object of his wishes, rather than of his hopes, to accomplish. 

The first collection which he published, entitled Pamela, ex- 
hibited the beauty and superiority of virtue in an innocent and 
unpolished mind, with the reward which often, even in this life, 
a protecting Providence bestows on goodness. A young woman 
of 1 iw degree, relating to her honest parents the severe trials she 
mil with from a master who ought to have been the protector, 



288 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

not the assailer of her honor, shows the character of a Ubertine in 
its truly contemptible Ught. This Hbertine, however, from the 
foundation of good principles laid in his early years by an excel- 
lent mother, by his passion for a virtuous young woman, and 
by her amiable example and unwearied patience when she be- 
came his wife, is, after a length of time, perfectly reclaimed. 

The second collection, published under the title of Clarissa, 
displayed a more melancholy scene. A young lady of higher 
fortune, and born to happier hopes, is seen involved in such a 
variety of deep distresses as lead her to an untimely death; 
.^ ^o affording a warning to parents against forcing the inclinations 

£^,3- "<5f their children in the most important article of their Hves, and 
to children against hoping too far from the fairest assurances of 
a man void of principle. The heroine, however, as a truly Chris- 
tian heroine, proves superior to her trials, and her heart, always 
excellent, refined, and exalted by every one of them, rejoices 
in the approach of a happy eternity. Her cruel destroyer ap- 
pears wretched and disappointed, even in the boasted success 
of his vile machinations; but still, buoyed up with self-conceit 
and vain presumption, he goes on, after every short fit of im- 
perfect, yet terrifying conviction, hardening himself more and 
more, till, unreclaimed by the most affecting warnings and re- 
peated admonitions, he perishes miserably in the bloom of life, 
and sinks into the grave, oppressed with guilt, remorse, and 
horror. His letters, it is hoped, afford many useful lessons to 
■?5^^j& '^**'the gay part of mankind, against that misuse of wit and youth, 
— of rank and fortune, and of every outward accomplishment, 

which turns them into a curse to the miserable possessor as 
well as to all around him. 

Here the editor apprehended he should be obliged to stop, by 
reason of his precarious state of health, and a variety of avoca- 
tions which claimed his first attention ; but it was insisted on by 
several of his friends, who were well assured he had the materi- 
als in his power, that he should produce into public view the char- 
acter and actions of a man of true honor. He has been enabled 
to obey these his friends, and to complete his first design; and 
now, therefore, presents to the public, in Sir Charles Grandison, 
the example of a man acting uniformly well through a variety 
of trying scenes, because all his actions are regulated by one 
steady principle. A man of religion and virtue, of liveliness and 



SIR CHARLES GRANDISON 289 

spirit, accomplished and agreeable, happy in himself, and a 
blessing to others. 

From what has been premised, it may be supposed that the 
present collection is not published ultimately, nor even prin- 
cipally, any more than the other two, for the sake of entertain- 
ment only. A much nobler end is in view. Yet it is hoped the 
variety of characters and conversations necessarily introduced 
into so large a correspondence as these volumes contain, will 
enliven as well as instruct, — the rather, as the principal corre- 
spondents are young ladies of polite education and of lively 
spirits. 

The nature of familiar letters, written, as it were, to the mo- 
ment, while the heart is agitated by hopes and fears, on events 
undecided, must plead an excuse for the bulk of a collection of 
this kind. Mere facts and characters might be comprised in a 
much smaller compass; but would they be equally interesting? 
It happens fortunately that an account of the juvenile years of 
the principal person is narratively given in some of the letters. 
As many, however, as could be spared have been omitted. There 
is not one episode in the whole, nor, after Sir Charles Grandison 
is introduced, one letter inserted, but what tends to illustrate 
the principal design. . . . 

[the wooing of Harriet] 
Harriet Byron to Lady Grandison 

. . . After some general conversation, which succeeded our 
playing, Sir Charles drew his chair between my grandmamma 
and aunt, and, taking my grandmamma's hand, ''May I not 
be allowed a quarter of an hour's conversation with Miss Byron 
in your presence, ladies?" said he, speaking low. ''We have, 
indeed, only friends and relations present; but it will be most 
agreeable, I believe, to the dear lady, that what I have to say 
to her, and to you, may be rather reported to the gentlemen 
than heard by them." 

"By all means, Sir Charles," said my grandmamma. Then, 
whispering to my aunt, "No man in this company thinks, but 
Sir Charles. Excuse me, my dear." 

The moment Sir Charles appHed himself in this particular 
manner to them, my heart, without hearing what he said, was 



290 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

at my mouth. I arose, and withdrew to the cedar parlor, fol- 
lowed by Lucy and Nancy. The gentlemen, seeming to recol- 
lect themselves, withdrew likewise to another apartment. My 
aunt came to me. "Love! But ah! my dear, how you tremble! 
You must come with me." And then she told me what he had 
said to my grandmamma and her, 

''I have no courage — none at all," said I. ''If apprehension, 
if timidity, be signs of love, I have them all. Sir Charles 
Grandison has not one.". . . 

My aunt led me in to Sir Charles and my grandmamma. He 
met me at my entrance into the room, and in the most engag- 
ing manner, my aunt having taken her seat, conducted me to a 
chair which happened to be vacant between her and my grand- 
mother. He took no notice of my emotion, and I the sooner 
recovered myself, and still the sooner, as he himself seemed to 
be in some little confusion. However, he sat down, and with a 
manly, yet respectful air, his voice gaining strength as he pro- 
ceeded, thus delivered himself: . . . 

Not well before, I was more than once apprehensive of faint- 
ing, as he talked, agreeable as was his talk, and engaging as 
was his manner. My grandmamma and aunt saw my com- 
plexion change at his particular address to me in the last part 
of his speech. Each put her kind hand on one of mine, and 
held it on it, as my other hand held my handkerchief now to 
my eyes, and now as a cover to myself-felt varying cheek. At 
the same moment that he ceased speaking, he took our triply 
united hands in both his, and in the most respectful yet 
graceful manner pressed each of the three with his lips, mine 
twice. I could not speak. 

My grandmamma and aunt, delighted, yet tears standing in 
their eyes, looked upon each other, and upon me, each as ex- 
pecting the other to speak. 

" I have, perhaps," said he, with some emotion, "taken up 
too much of Miss Byron's attention on this my first personal 
declaration. I will now return to the company below. To-mor- 
row I will do myself the honor to dine with you. We will for 
this evening postpone the important subject. Miss Byron, I 
presume, will be best pleased to have it so. I shall to-morrow 
be favored with the result of your deliberations. Meantime, 
may I meet with an interceding friend in every one I have had 



SIR CHARLES GRANDISON 291 

the pleasure to see this day! I must flatter myself with the 
honor of Miss Byron's whole heart, as well as with the appro- 
bation of all her friends. I cannot be thought at present to 
deserve it; but it shall be the endeavor of my life to do so." 

He withdrew, with a grace which was all his own. 

The moment he was gone from us, my grandmamma threw 
her arms about her Harriet, then about my aunt; and they 
congratulated me, and each other. . . . 

Miss Byron, in continuation 

. . . After breakfast first one, then anothef, dropped away, 
and left only Sir Charles and me together. Lucy was the last 
that went, and the moment she was withdrawn, while I was 
thinking to retire to dress, he placed himself by me. 

"Think me not abrupt, my dearest Miss Byron," said he, 
" that I take almost the only opportunity which has offered of 
entering upon a subject that is next my heart." 

I found my face glow. I was silent. 

" You have given me hope, madam; all your friends encour- 
age that hope. I love, I revere your friends. What I have now 
to petition for is a confirmation of the hope I have presumed 
upon. Can you, madam (the female delicacy is more delicate 
than that of man can be), unequally as you may think yourself 
circumstanced with a man who owns that once he could have 
devoted himself to another lady, — can you say that the man 
before you is the man whom you can, whom you do prefer to 
any other?" 

He stopped, expecting my answer. 

After some hesitations, "I have been accustomed, sir," 
said I, "by those friends whom you so deservedly value, to 
speak nothing but the simplest truth. In an article of this 
moment, I should be inexcusable if — " 

I stopped. His eyes were fixed upon my face. For my Hfe I 
could not speak, yet wished to be able to speak. 

"If — if what, madam?" And he snatched my hand, bowed 
his face upon it, held it there, not looking up to mine. I could 
then speak. 

"If, thus urged, and by Sir Charles Grandison, I did not 
speak my heart. I answer — sir, I can — I do." 

I wanted, I thought, just then, to shrink into myself. 



292 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 

He kissed my hand with fervor, dropped down on one knee 
— again kissed it. " You have laid me, madam, under ever- 
lasting obligation; and will you permit me before I rise — 
loveliest of women, will you permit me to beg an early day? I 
have many affairs on my hands; many more in design, now I 
am come, as I hope, to settle in my native country for the rest 
of my life. My chief glory will be to behave commendably in 
the private Hfe. I wish not to be a pubhc man, and it must 
be a very particular call, for the service of my king and country 
united, that shall draw me out into public notice. Make me, 
madam, soon the happy husband I hope to be. I prescribe 
not to you the time, but you are above empty forms. May I 
presume to hope it will be before the end of a month to come? " 

He had forgot himself. He said he would not prescribe to me. 

After some involuntary hesitations, "I am afraid of no- 
thing so much just now, sir," said I, "as appearing, to a man 
of your honor and penetration, affected. Rise, sir, I beseech 
you. I cannot bear — " 

"Twill, madam, and rise as well as kneel, to thank you, when 
you have answered a question so very important to my happi- 
ness." . . . 

" I hope, sir, you will not be displeased. I did not think you 
would so soon be so very earnest. But this, sir, I say, — let 
me have reason to think that my happiness will not be the 
misfortune of a more excellent woman, and it shall be my en- 
deavor to make the man happy who only can make me so." 

He clasped me in his arms with an ardor that displeased 
me not, on reflection, but at the time startled me. He then 
thanked me again on one knee. I held out the hand he had not 
in his, with intent to raise him, for I could not speak. He re- 
ceived it as a token of favor, kissed it with ardor, arose, — 
again pressed my cheek with his lips. I was too much sur- 
prised to repulse him with anger ; but was he not too free? . . . 



J 



HENRY FIELDING 

THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH 

ANDREWS 

1742 

PREFACE Xfy \J^ 'VJJj^ t<»0.>^^4^ 

As it is possible the mere English reader may have' a different 
idea of romance from the author of these little volumes, and 
may consequently expect a kind of entertainment not to be 
found, nor which was even intended, in the following pages, it 
may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this 
kind of writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto 
attempted in our language. 

The Epic, as well as the Drama, isjiivided intqjragedy and 
comedy. Homer, who was the father of this species of poetry, 
gave us a pattern of both these, though that of the latter kind 
is entirely lost ; which Aristotle tells us bore the same relation 
to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that 
we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity 
is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, 
would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of 
this great original. 

And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not 
scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose; for 
though it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in 
the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely metre, yet when 
any kind of writing contains all its other parts — such as fable, 
action, characters, sentiments, and diction — and is deficient 
in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the 
epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under 
another head, or to assign it a particular name to itself. 

Thus the name Telemachus of the Archbishop of Cambray ^ 
appears to me of the epic kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer; 
indeed, it is much fairer and more reasonable to give it a name 

* Fenelon. 



294 HENRY FIELDING 

common with that species from which it differs only in a single 
instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in 
no other. Such as those voluminous works, commonly called 
Romances, — namely Clelia, Cleopatra, Astraa, Cassandra, 
The Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others, which contain, as I 
apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment. 

Now a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose, differing 
from comedy as the serious epic from tragedy; its action being 
more extended and comprehensive, containing a much larger 
circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of char- 
acters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and ac- 
tion, in this: that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so 
in the other they are Hght and ridiculous. It differs in its char- 
acters by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently 
of inferior manners, whereas the grave romance sets the highest 
before us. Lastly, in its sentiments and diction, by preserving 
the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the diction, I think, 
burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which many 
instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the 
battles, and some other places not necessary to be pointed out 
to the classical reader, for whose entertainment those parodies 
or burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated. 

But, though we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, 
we have carefully excluded it from our sentiments and charac- 
ters; for there it is never properly introduced, unless in writings 
of the burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. Indeed, 
no two species of writing can differ more widely than the comic 
and the burlesque; for as the latter is ever the exhibition of 
what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our dehght, if we 
examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appro- 
priating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or e converso, 
so in the former we should ever confine ourselves strictly to 
nature, from the just imitation of which will flow all the pleas- 
ure we can this way convey to a sensible reader. And perhaps 
there is one reason why a comic writer should of all others be 
the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not 
be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and 
admirable, but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer 
with the ridiculous. 

I have hinted this httle concerning burlesque, because I have 



JOSEPH ANDREWS 295 

often heard that name given to performances which have been 
truly of the comic kind, from the author's having sometimes 
admitted it in his diction only ; which, as it is the dress of poetry, 
doth, like the dress of men, estabhsh characters (the one of the 
whole poem, and the other of the whole man) in vulgar opinion, 
beyond any of their greater excellences. But surely a certain 
drollery in style, where characters and sentiments are perfectly 
natural, no more constitutes the burlesque, than an empty 
pomp and dignity of words, where everything else is mean and 
low, can entitle any performance to the appellation of the true 
subhme. 

And I apprehend my Lord Shaftesbury's opinion of mere 
burlesque agrees with mine, when he asserts there is no such 
thing to be found in the writings of the ancients. But perhaps 
I have less abhorrence than he professes for it; and that, not 
because I have had some little success on the stage this way, 
but rather as it contributes more to exquisite mirth.and laugh- 
ter than any other; and these are probably more wholesome 
physic for the mind, and conduce better to purge away spleen, 
melancholy, and ill affections, than is generally imagined. Nay, 
I will appeal to common observation, whether the same com- 
panies are not found more full of good-humor and benevolence, 
after they have been sweetened for two or three hours with 
entertainments of this kind, than when soured by a tragedy or 
a grave lecture. 

But to illustrate all this by another science, in which, per- 
haps, we shall see the distinction more clearly and plainly, let 
us examine the works of a comic history painter, with those per- 
formances which the Italians call caricatura-^ where we shall 
find the true excellence of the former to consist in the exactest 
copying of nature, insomuch that a judicious eye instantly 
rejects anything outre, any liberty which the painter hath 
taken with the features of that ahna mater; whereas in the cari- 
catura we allow all license, — its aim is to exhibit monsters, 
not men, and all distortions and exaggerations whatever are 
within its proper province. 

Now what caricatura is in painting, burlesque is in writing; 
and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate 
to each other. And here I shall observe that, as in the former 
the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter 



296 HENRY FIELDING 

infinitely on the side of the writer; for the monstrous is much 
easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than 
paint. 

And though perhaps this latter species doth not in either 
science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other, 
yet it will be owned, I beUeve, that a more rational and useful 
pleasure arises to us from it. He who should call the ingenious 
Hogarth a burlesque painter would, in my opinion, do him 
very little honor; for sure it is much easier, much less the 
subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other 
feature, of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd 
or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of men on 
canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter 
to say his figures seem to breathe ; but surely it is a much greater 
and nobler applause that they appear to think. 

But to return. The ridiculous only, as I have before said, 
falls within my province in the present work. Nor will some 
explanation of the word be thought impertinent by the reader, 
if he considers how wonderfully it hath been mistaken, even 
by writers who have professed it. For to what but such a mis- 
take can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the black- 
est villainies, and, what is yet worse, the most dreadful calami- 
ties? What could exceed the absurdity of an author who should 
write the comedy of Nero, with the merry incident of ripping 
up his mother's belly? Or what would give a greater shock to 
humanity than an attempt to expose the miseries of poverty 
and distress to ridicule? And yet the reader will not want much 
learning to suggest such instances to himself. 

Besides, it may seem remarkable that Aristotle, who is so 
fond and free of definitions, hath not thought proper to define 
the ridiculous. Indeed, where he tells us it is proper to comedy, 
he hath remarked that villainy is not its object ; but he hath not, 
as I remember, positively asserted what is. Nor doth the Abbe 
Bellegarde, who hath written a treatise on this subject, though 
he shows us many species of it, once trace it to its fountain. 

The only source of the true ridiculous, as it appears to me, is 
affectation. But though it arises from one spring only, when 
we consider the infinite streams into which this one branches, 
we shall presently cease to admire at the copious field it affords 
to an observer. Now affectation proceeds from one of these two 



JOSEPH ANDREWS 297 

causes, vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting 
false characters, in order to purchase applause, so hypocrisy 
sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by conceaHng our vices 
under an appearance of their opposite virtues. And though 
these two causes are often confounded (for there is some diffi- 
culty in distinguishing them), yet, as they proceed from very 
different motives, so they are as clearly distinct in their opera- 
tions; for, indeed, the affectation which arises from vanity is 
nearer to truth than the other, as it hath not that violent repug- 
nancy of nature to struggle with, which that of the hypocrite 
hath. It may be likewise noted that affectation doth not imply 
an absolute negation of those qualities which are affected, and 
therefore, though, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly 
alHed to deceit, yet when it comes from vanity only, it partakes 
of the nature of ostentation. For instance, the affectation of 
liberality in a vain man differs visibly from the same affecta- 
tion in the avaricious ; for though the vain man is not what he 
would appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree 
he would be thought to have it, yet it sits less awkwardly on 
him than on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of 
what he would seem to be. 

From the discovery of this affectation arises the ridiculous, 
which always strikes the reader with surprise and pleasure, 
and that in a higher and stronger degree when the affectation 
arises from hypocrisy than when from vanity; for to discover 
any one to be the exact reverse of what he affects is more sur- 
prising, and consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a 
little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of. I 
might observe that our Ben Jonson, who of all men understood 
the ridiculous the best, hath chiefly used the hypocritical affec- 
tation. 

Now from affectation only, the misfortunes and calamities of 
life, or the imperfections of nature, may become the objects of 
ridicule. Surely he hath a very ill-framed mind who can look 
on ugliness, infirmity, or poverty, as ridiculous in themselves; 
nor do I believe any man living, who meets a dirty fellow riding 
through the streets in a cart, is struck with an idea of the ridicu- 
lous from it. But if he should see the same figure descend from 
his coach and six, or bolt from his chair with his hat under his 
arm, he would then begin to laugh, and with justice. In the 



298 HENRY FIELDING 

same manner, were we to enter a poor house and behold a 
wretched family shivering with cold and languishing with 
hunger, it would not incline us to laughter (at least we must 
have very diabolical natures if it would). But should we dis- 
cover there a grate, instead of coals, adorned with flowers, 
empty plate or china dishes on the sideboard, or any other 
affectation of riches and finery, either on their persons or in 
their furniture, we might then indeed be excused for ridiculing 
so fantastical an appearance. Much less are natural imper- 
fections the object of derision ; but when ugliness aims at the 
applause of beauty, or lameness endeavors to display agility, it 
is then that these unfortunate circumstances, which at first 
moved our compassion, tend only to raise our mirth. 
The poet carries this very far: — 

None are for being what they are in fault, 
But for not being what they would be thought. 

Where, if the metre would suffer the word ridiculous to close 
the first line, the thought would be rather more proper. Great 
vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults 
of our pity ; but affectation appears to me the only true source 
of the ridiculous. 

But perhaps it may be objected to me that I have, against 
my own rules, introduced vices, and of a very black kind, into 
this work. To which I shall answer, first, that it is very diffi- 
cult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from 
them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the 
accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than 
causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are 
never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. 
Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time 
on the scene; and lastly, they never produce the intended 
evil. . . . 

AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN PARSON ADAMS AND PARSON 

TRULLIBER 

[Book ii, Chapter xiv] 

Parson Adams came to the house of parson Trulliber, whom 

he found stripped into his waistcoat, with an apron on, and a 

pail in his hand, just come from serving his hogs; for Mr. Trulli- 



JOSEPH ANDREWS 299 

ber was a parson on Sundays, but all the other six days might 
more properly be called a farmer. He occupied a small piece of 
land of his own, besides which he rented a considerable deal 
more. His wife milked his cows, managed his dairy, and fol- 
lowed the markets with butter and eggs. The hogs fell chiefly 
to his care, which he carefully waited on at home, and attended 
to fairs; on which occasion he was liable to many jokes, his own 
size being, with much ale, rendered little inferior to that of the 
beasts he sold. He was indeed one of the largest men you should 
see, and could have acted the part of Sir John Falstaff without 
stuffing. Add to this that the rotundity of his belly was con- 
siderably increased by the shortness of his stature, his shadow 
ascending very near as far in height, when he lay on his back, 
as when he stood on his legs. His voice was loud and hoarse, 
and his accent extremely broad. To complete the whole, he had 
a stateliness in his gait, when he walked, not unHke that of a 
goose, only he stalked slower. 

Mr. Trulliber, being informed that somebody wanted to 
speak with him, immediately slipped off his apron and clothed 
himself in an old night-gown, being the dress in which he always 
saw his company at home. His wife, who informed him of Mr. 
Adams's arrival, had made a small mistake, for she had told 
her husband she believed there was a man come for some of his 
hogs. This supposition made Mr. Trulliber hasten with the 
utmost expedition to attend his guest. He no sooner saw Adams 
than, not in the least doubting the cause of his errand to be 
what his wife had imagined, he told him he was come in very 
good time ; that he expected a dealer that very afternoon ; and 
added, they were all pure and fat, and upwards of twenty 
score apiece. Adams answered he believed he did not know 
him. " Yes, yes," cried Trulliber, " I have seen you often at 
fair. Why, we have dealt before now, mun, I warrant you. Yes, 
yes," cries he, " I remember thy face very well, though I have 
never sold thee a flitch of such bacon as is now in the sty." 
Upon which he laid violent hands on Adams, and dragged him 
into the hogs' sty, which was indeed but two steps from his 
parlor window. They were no sooner arrived there than he 
cried out, " Do but handle them! Step in, friend; art welcome 
to handle them, whether dost buy or no." At which words, 
opening the gate, he pushed Adams into the pig-sty, insisting 



300 HENRY FIELDING 

on it that he should handle them before he would talk one 
word with him. 

Adams, whose natural complacence was beyond any artifi- 
cial, was obliged to comply before he was suffered to. explain 
himself; and, laying hold on one of their tails, the unruly beast 
gave such a sudden spring that he threw poor Adams all along 
in the mire. Trulliber, instead of assisting him to get up, burst 
into a laughter, and, entering the sty, said to Adams, with 
some contempt, "Why, dost not know how to handle a hog?" 
and was going to lay hold of one himself; but Adams, who 
thought he had carried his complacence far enough, was no 
sooner on his legs than he escaped out of the reach of the ani- 
mals, and cried out, "iVf/ haheo cum porcis; I am a clerg^inan, 
sir, and am not come to buy hogs." 

Trulliber answered, he was sorry for his mistake, but that he 
must blame his wife; adding, she was a fool, and always com- 
mitted blunders. He then desired him to walk in and clean him- 
self, that he would only fasten up the sty and follow him. 
Adams desired leave to dry his great-coat, wig, and hat by the 
fire, which Trulliber granted. Mrs. Trulliber would have 
brought him a basin of water to wash his face, but her husband 
bid her be quiet like a fool as she was, or she would commit 
more blunders, and then directed Adams to the pump. While 
Adams was thus employed, Trulliber, conceiving no great 
respect for the appearance of his guest, fastened the parlor door, 
and now conducted him into the kitchen, telling him he believed 
a cup of drink would do him no harm, and whispered his wife 
to draw a little of the worst ale. 

After a short silence Adams said, "I fancy, sir, you already 
perceive me to bea clergyman." "Aye, aye," cries Trulliber, 
grinning, " I perceive you have some cassock; I will not venture 
to caale it a whole one." Adams answered it was indeed none 
of the best, but he had the misfortune to tear it about ten years 
ago, in passing over a stile. Mrs. TrulHber, returning with the 
drink, told her husband she fancied the gentleman was a trav- 
eler, and that he would be glad to eat a bit. Trulliber bid her 
hold her impertinent tongue, and asked her if parsons used to 
travel without horses, adding, he supposed the gentleman had 
none by his having no boots on. "Yes, sir, yes," says Adams; 
"I have a horse^ but I have left him behind me." "I am glad 



JOSEPH ANDREWS 301 

to hear you have one/' says Trulliber, "for I assure you I don't 
love to see clergymen on foot; it is not seemly, nor suiting the 
dignity of the cloth." 

Here Trulliber made a long oration on the dignity of the cloth 
(or rather gown), not much worth relating, till his wife had 
spread the table and set a mess of porridge on it for his break- 
fast. He then said to Adams, "I don't know, friend, how you 
came to caale on me; however, as you are here, if you think 
proper to eat a morsel, you may." Adams accepted the invita- 
tion, and the two parsons sat down together, Mrs. Trulliber 
waiting behind her husband's chair, as was, it seems, her cus- 
tom. Trulliber ate heartily, but scarce put anything in his 
mouth without finding fault with his wife's cookery; all which 
the poor woman bore patiently. Indeed, she was so absolute 
an admirer of her husband's greatness and importance, of which 
she had frequent hints from his own mouth, that she almost car- 
ried her adoration to an opinion of his infallibility. . . . 

As soon as their breakfast was ended, Adams began in the 
following manner: "I think, sir, it is high time to inform you of 
the business of my embassy. I am a traveler, and am passing 
this way in company with two young people, a lad and a dam- 
sel, my parishioners, towards my own cure. We stopped at a 
house of hospitality in the parish, where they directed me to 
you as having the cure." "Though I am but a curate," says 
Trulliber, "I believe I am as warm as the vicar himself, or per- 
haps the rector of the next parish too; I believe I could buy 
them both." "Sir," cries Adams, "I rejoice thereat. Now, sir, 
my business is, that we are by various accidents stripped of our 
money, and are not able to pay our reckoning, being seven shil- 
lings. I therefore request you to assist me with the loan of 
those seven shillings, and also seven shillings more ; which, 
peradventure, I shall return to you, but if not, I am convinced 
you will joyfully embrace such an opportunity of laying up 
treasure in a better place than any this world affords." 

Suppose a stranger, who entered the chambers of a lawyer, 
being imagined a client, when the lawyer was preparing his 
palm for the fee, should pull out a writ against him. Suppose 
an apothecary, at the door of a chariot containing some great 
doctor of eminent skill, should, instead of directions to a pa- 
tient, present him with a potion for himself. Suppose a minis- 



302 HENRY FIELDING 

ter should, instead of a good round sum, treat my Lord , or 

Sir , or Esq. , with a good broomstick. Suppose a civil 

companion, or a led captain, should, instead of virtue and honor 
and beauty and parts and admiration, thunder vice and in- 
famy and ugliness and folly and contempt in his patron's ears. 
Suppose, when a tradesman first carries in his bill, the man of 
fashion should pay it; or suppose, if he did so, the tradesman 
should abate what he had overcharged on the supposition of 
waiting. In short, suppose what you will, you never can nor 
will suppose anything equal to the astonishment which seized 
on Trulliber, as soon as Adams had ended his speech. A while 
he rolled his eyes in silence, sometimes surveying Adams, then 
his wife, then casting them on the ground, then lifting them up 
to heaven. At last he burst forth in the. following accents: — 

"Sir, I believe I know where to lay up my little treasure as 
well as another. I thank G — , if I am not so warm as some, I 
am content; that is a blessing greater than riches, and he to 
whom that is given need ask no more. To be content with a 
little is greater than to possess the world, which a man may 
possess without being so. Lay up my treasure ! What matters 
where a man's treasure is whose heart is in the Scriptures? 
There is the treasure of a Christian." 

At these words the water ran from Adams's eyes; and, catch- 
ing Trulliber by the hand in a rapture, "Brother," says he, 
"heavens bless the accident by which I came to see you! I 
would have walked many a mile to have communed with you; 
and, believe me, I will shortly pay you a second visit. But my 
friends, I fancy, by this time, wonder at my stay; so let me have 
the money immediately." 

Trulliber then put on a stern look, and cried out, " Thou dost 
not intend to rob me?" At which the wife, bursting into tears, 
fell on her knees and roared out, "O dear sir! for heaven's sake 
don't rob my master; we are but poor people." " Get up, for a 
fool as thou art, and go about thy business!" said Trulliber. 
" Dost think the man will venture his life? He is a beggar, and 
no robber." "Very true, indeed," answered Adams. "I wish, 
with all my heart, the tithing-man was here," cries Trulliber. 
" I would have thee punished as a vagabond for thy impudence. 
Fourteen shillings indeed! I won't give thee a farthing. I be- 
lieve thou art no more a clergyman than the woman there" 



JOSEPH ANDREWS 303 

(pointing to his wife); "but if thou art, dost deserve to have 
thy gown stripped over thy shoulders, for running about the 
country in such a manner." 

"I forgive your suspicions," says Adams. "But suppose I 
am not a clergyman, I am nevertheless thy brother; and thou, 
as a Christian, much more as a clergyman, art obliged to relieve 
my distress." 

"Dost preach tome?" replied Trulliber. "Dost pretend to 
instruct me in my duty?" "Ifacks, a good story," cries Mrs. 
Trulliber, "to preach to my master." " Silence, woman!" cries 
Trulliber. "I would have thee know, friend " (addressing him- 
self to Adams) , " I shall not learn my duty from such as thee. I 
know what charity is, better than to give to vagabonds." "Be- 
sides, if we were inclined, the poor's rate obliges us to give so 
much charity," cries the wife. "Pugh! Thou art a fool. Poor's 
rate! Hold thy nonsense!" answered Trulliber; and then, 
turning to Adams, he told him he would give him nothing. 

"I am sorry," answered Adams, "that you do know what 
charity is, since you practice it no better. I must tell you, if 
you trust to your knowledge for your justification, you will find 
yourself deceived, though you should add faith to it, without 
good works." 

"Fellow," cries Trulliber, "dost thou speak against faith in 
my house ! Get out of my doors ; I will no longer remain under 
the same roof with a wretch who speaks wantonly of faith and 
the Scriptures." "Name not the Scriptures!" says Adams. 
"How! Not name the Scriptures! Do you disbelieve the Scrip- 
tures?" cries Trulliber. "No; but you do," answered Adams, 
"if I may reason from your practice; for their commands are so 
explicit, and their rewards and punishments so immense, that it 
is impossible a man should stedfastly believe without obeying. 
Now there is no command more express, no duty more fre- 
quently enjoined, than charity. Whoever, therefore, is void of 
charity, I make no scruple of pronouncing that he is no Chris- 
tian." 

"I would not advise thee," says Trulliber, " to say that I am 
no Christian. I won't take it of you ; for I believe I am as good a 
man as thyself." And indeed, though he was now rather too 
corpulent for athletic exercises, he had in his youth been one of 
the best boxers and cudgel-players in the county. His wife. 



304 HENRY FIELDING 

seeing him clench his fist, interposed, and begged him not to 
fight, but show himself a true Christian, and take the law of 
him. As nothing could provoke Adams to strike but an abso- 
lute assault on himself or his friend, he smiled at the angry look 
and gestures of Trulliber, and, telling him he was sorry to see 
such men in orders, departed without further ceremony. 

THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING 

1749 

[Each of the eighteen Books of Tom Jones is opened with an introduc- 
tory chapter, — sometimes an informal digression, sometimes a formal 
critical essay, giving, like the Preface to Joseph A ndrews, important views 
of the novelist's conception of his art. The following extracts include the 
introductory chapters of Books I, X, and XIII, together with an episode 
from Book XVI, chapter v.] 

THE INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK, OR BILL OF FARE TO THE 

FEAST 

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who 
gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who 
keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for 
their money. In the former case, it is well known that the en- 
tertainer provides what fare he pleases ; and though this should 
be very indifferent, and utterly disagreeable to the taste of his 
company, they must not find any fault; nay, on the contrary, 
good breeding forces them outwardly to approve and to com- 
mend whatever is set before them. Now the contrary of this 
happens to the master of an ordinary. Men who pay for what 
they eat will insist on gratifying their palates, however nice and 
whimsical these may prove; and, if everything is not agreeable 
to their taste, will challenge a right to censure, to abuse, and to 
d — n their dinner without control. 

To prevent, therefore, giving offense to their customers by any 
such disappointment, it hath been usual, with the honest and 
well-meaning host, to provide a bill of fare, which all persons 
may peruse at their first entrance into the house; and, having 
thence acquainted themselves with the entertainment which 
they may expect, may either stay and regale with what is pro- 
vided for them, or may depart to som.e other ordinary better 
accommodated to their taste. 



TOM JONES 305 

As we do not disdain to borrow wit or wisdom from any 
man who is capable of lending us either, we have condescended 
to take a hint from these honest victualers, and shall prefix not 
only a general bill of fare to our whole entertainment, but 
shall likewise give the reader particular bills to every course 
which is to be served up in this and the ensuing volumes. 

The provision, then, which we have here made is no other 
than Human Nature. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, 
though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be of- 
fended, because I have named but one article. The tortoise, as 
the alderman of Bristol, well learned in eating, knows by much 
experience, besides the deHcious calibash and calipee, contains 
many different kinds of food; nor can the learned reader be ig- 
norant that in human nature, though here collected under one 
general name, is such prodigious variety, that a cook will have 
sooner gone through all the several species of animal and vege- 
table food in the world, than an author will be able to exhaust 
so extensive a subject. 

An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more 
delicate, that this dish is too common and vulgar; for what else 
is the subject of all the romances, novels, plays and poems, 
with which the stalls abound? Many exquisite viands might be 
rejected by the epicure, if it was a sufficient cause for his con- 
temning of them as common and vulgar, that something was to 
be found in the most paltry alleys under the same name. In 
reaHty, true nature is as difficult to be met with in authors, as 
the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be found in the 
shops. 

But the whole, to continue the same metaphor, consists in 
the cookery of the author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us, — 

True wit is nature to advantage dressed. 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. 

The same animal which hath the honor to have some part of his 
flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in 
another part, and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the 
vilest stall in town. Where, then, lies the difference between the 
food of the nobleman and the porter, if both are at dinner on the 
same ox or calf, but in the seasoning, the dressing, the garnish- 
ing, and the setting forth? Hence the one provokes and incites 



3o6 HENRY FIELDING 

the most languid appetite, and the other turns and palls that 
which is the sharpest and keenest. 

In hke manner, the excellence of the mental entertainment 
consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well 
dressing it up. How pleased, therefore, will the reader be to 
find that we have, in the following work, adhered closely to one 
of the highest principles of the best cook which the present age, 
or perhaps that of Heliogabalus, hath produced. This great 
man, as is well known to all lovers of polite eating, begins at 
first by setting plain things before his hungry guests, rising 
afterwards by degrees, as their stomachs may be supposed to 
decrease, to the very quintessence of sauce and spices. In like 
manner we shall represent human nature at first to the reader 
in that more plain and simple manner in which it is found in the 
country, and shall hereafter hash and ragout it with all the high 
French and Italian seasoning of affectation and vice which 
courts and cities afford. By these means, we doubt not but our 
reader may be rendered desirous to read on forever, as the 
great person just above mentioned is supposed to have made 
some persons eat. 

CONTAINING INSTRUCTIONS VERY NECESSARY TO BE PERUSED 
BY MODERN CRITICS 

Reader, it is impossible we should know what sort of person 
thou wilt be: for perhaps thou mayst be as learned in human 
nature as Shakespeare himself was, and perhaps thou mayst be 
no wiser than some of his editors. Now lest this latter should 
be the case, we think proper, before we go any farther together, 
to give thee a few wholesome admonitions, that thou mayst 
not as grossly misunderstand and misrepresent us, as some of 
the said editors have misunderstood and misrepresented their 
author. 

First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of 
the incidents in this our history as impertinent and foreign to 
our main design, because thou dost not immediately conceive 
in what manner such incident may conduce to that design. 
This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our 
own; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault 
with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the 
whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, 



TOM JONES 307 

is a most presumptuous absurdity. The allusion and metaphor 
we have here made use of, we must acknowledge to be infinitely 
too great for our occasion, but there is indeed no other which is 
at all adequate to express the difference between an author of 
the first rate and a critic of the lowest. 

Another caution we would give thee, my good reptile, is that 
thou dost not find out too near a resemblance between certain 
characters here introduced; as for instance, between the land- 
lady who appears in the seventh book, and her in the ninth. 
Thou art to know, friend, that there are certain characteristics 
in which most individuals of every profession and occupation 
agree. To be able to preserve these characteristics, and at the 
same time to diversify their operations, is one talent of a good 
writer. Again, to mark the nice distinction between two persons 
actuated by the same vice or folly is another; and as this last 
talent is found in very few writers, so is the true discernment 
of it found in as few readers, — though I believe the observ- 
ation of this forms a very principal pleasure in those who are 
capable of the discovery. Every person, for instance, can dis- 
tinguish between Sir Epicure Mammon and Sir Fopling Flutter ; ^ 
but to note the difference between Sir Fopling Flutter and Sir 
Courtly Nice^ requires a most exquisite judgment; for want of 
which, vulgar spectators of plays very often do great injustice in 
the theatre, where I have sometimes known a poet in danger of 
being convicted as a thief, upon much worse evidence than the 
resemblance of hands hath been held to be in the law. In reahty, 
I apprehend every amorous widow on the stage would run the 
hazard of being condemned as a servile imitation of Dido, but 
that happily very few of our playhouse critics understand 
enough of Latin to read Virgil. 

In the next place, we must admonish thee, my worthy friend 
(for perhaps thy heart may be better than thy head), not to 
condemn a character as a bad one, because it is not perfectly a 
good one. If thou dost delight in these models of perfection, 
there are books enow written to gratify thy taste; but as we 
have not, in the course of our conversation, ever happened to 
meet with any such person, we have not chosen to introduce 
any such here. To say the truth, I as httle question whether 

1 In Jonson's Alchemist and Etherege's Man of Mode. 
* In Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice. 



3o8 HENRY FIELDING 

mere man ever arrived at this consummate degree of excellence, 
as well as whether there hath ever existed a monster bad enough 
to verify that 

— ntdla virtute redemptum 
vitiis 1 — 

in Juvenal. Nor do I, indeed, conceive the good purposes served 
by inserting characters of such angeUc perfection or such dia- 
bolical depravity, in any work of invention: since from contem- 
plating either, the mind of man is more Kkely to be over- 
whelmed with sorrow and shame, than to draw any good uses 
from such patterns. For in the former instance he may be both 
concerned and ashamed to see a pattern of excellence, in his 
nature, which he may reasonably despair of ever arriving at; 
and in contemplating the latter, he may be no less affected 
with those uneasy sensations, at seeing the nature of which he 
is a partaker degraded into so odious and detestable a creature. 
In fact, if there be enough of goodness in a character to 
engage the admiration and affection of a well-disposed mind, 
though there should appear some of those little blemishes, 
quas humana parum cavit natura,^ they will raise our compassion 
rather than our abhorrence. Indeed nothing can be of more 
moral use than the imperfections which are seen in examples of 
this kind, since such form a kind of surprise, more apt to affect 
and dwell upon our minds, than the faults of very vicious and 
wicked persons. The foibles and vices of men in whom there is 
great mixture of good, become more glaring objects, from the 
virtues which contrast them and show their deformity; and 
when we find such vices attended with their evil consequence 
to our favorite characters, we are not only taught to shun them 
for our own sake, but to hate them for the mischiefs they have 
already brought on those we love. 

AN INVOCATION 

Come, bright love of fame, inspire my glowing breast: not 
thee I call, who, over sweUing tides of blood and tears, dost bear 
the hero on to glory, while sighs of millions waft his spreading 
sails; but thee, fair, gentle maid, whom Mnesis,^ happy nymph, 
first on the banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee whom Mae- 

1 "Redeemed from vice by not a single virtue." 

* "Which human nature took too little care to avoid." 

» For Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses. 



TOM JONES 309 

onia^ educated, whom Mantua- charmed, and who, on that fair 
hill which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain, sat, with 
thy Milton, sweetly tuning the heroic lyre ; — fill my ravished 
fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come. Foretell 
me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, 
hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads 
the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from 
her s}Tnpathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou 
teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, — nay, even to feed 
on future praise. Comfort me by a solemn assurance that, 
when the little parlor in which I sit at this instant shall be re- 
duced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honor by 
those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither 
know nor see. 

And thou, much plumper dame, whom no airy forms nor 
phantoms of imagination clothe; whom the well-seasoned beef, 
and pudding richly stained with plums, delight; — thee I call! 
In Grub Street school didst thou suck in the elements of thy 
erudition. Here hast thou, in thy maturer age, taught poetry 
to tickle not the fancy, but the pride of the patron. Comedy 
from thee learns a grave and solemn air ; while tragedy storms 
loud, and rends th' affrighted theatres with its thunder. To 
soothe thy wearied limbs in slumber. Alderman History tells 
his tedious tale; and again to awaken thee. Monsieur Romance 
performs his surprising tricks of dexterity. Nor less thy well- 
fed bookseller obeys thy influence. By thy advice the heavy, 
unread folio lump, which long had dozed on the dusty shelf, 
piece-mealed into numbers, runs nimbly through the nation. 
Instructed by thee, some books, like quacks, impose on the 
world by promising wonders, while others turn beaus, and trust 
all their merits to a gilded outside. Come, thou jolly substance, 
with thy shining face, keep back thy inspiration, but hold forth 
thy tempting rewards ; thy shining, chinking heap ; thy quickly 
convertible bank-bill, big with unseen riches; thy often-varying 
stock; the warm, the comfortable house; and lastly, a fair por- 
tion of that bounteous mother whose flowing breasts yield re- 
dundant sustenance for all her numerous offspring, did not some 
too greedily and wantonly drive their brethren from the teat. 
Come thou ; and if I am too tasteless of thy valuable treasures, 

1 Birthplace of Homer. * Birthplace of Virgil. 



3IO HENRY FIELDING 

warm my heart with the transporting thought of conveying 
them to others. Tell me that through thy bounty the prattling 
babes whose innocent play hath often been interrupted by my 
labors may one time be amply rewarded for them. 

And now this ill-yoked pair, this lean shadow and this fat 
substance, have prompted me to write, whose assistance shall 
I invoke to direct my pen? 

First, Genius, thou gift of heaven ; without whose aid in vain 
we struggle against the stream of nature. Thou who dost sow 
the generous seeds which art nourishes and brings to perfection, 
do thou kindly take me by the hand, and lead me through all 
the mazes, the winding labyrinths of nature. Initiate me into 
all those mysteries which profane eyes never beheld. Teach 
me — which to thee is no difficult task — to know mankind 
better than they know themselves. Remove that mist which 
dims the intellects of mortals, and causes them to adore men for 
their art, or to detest them for their cunning in deceiving others, 
when they are in reality the objects only of ridicule for deceiv- 
ing themselves. Strip off the thin disguise of wisdom from self- 
conceit, of plenty from avarice, and of glory from ambition. 
Come thou, that hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, 
thy Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Moliere, thy Shakespeare, 
thy Swift, thy Marivaux, — fill my pages with humor, till man- 
kind learn the good-nature to laugh only at the follies of others, 
and the humility to grieve at their own. 

And thou, almost the constant attendant on true genius, 
Humanity, bring all thy tender sensations. If thou hast already 
disposed of them all between thy Allen and thy Lyttelton,^ steal 
them a little while from their bosoms. Not without these the 
tender scene is painted. From these alone proceed the noble, 
disinterested friendship, the melting love, the generous senti- 
ment, the ardent gratitude, the soft compassion, the candid 
opinion, and all those strong energies of a good mind, which 
fill the moistened eyes with tears, the glowing cheeks with 
blood, and swell the heart with tides of grief, joy, and benevo- 
lence. 

And thou, O Learning (for without thy assistance nothing 
pure, nothing correct, can genius produce), do thou guide my 
pen. Thee, in thy favorite fields, where the limpid, gently- 

1 Ralph Allen and Lord Lyttelton, distinguished for their benevolence. 



TOM JONES 311 

rolling Thames washes thy Etonian banks, in early youth I 
have worshiped. To thee, at thy birchen altar, with true Spar- 
tan devotion, I have sacrificed my blood. Come, then, and 
from thy vast, luxuriant stores, in long antiquity piled up, pour 
forth the rich profusion. Open thy Meeonian and thy Mantuan 
coffers, with whatever else includes thy philosophic, thy poetic, 
and thy historical treasures, whether with Greek or Roman 
characters thou hast chosen to inscribe the ponderous chests; 
give me awhile that key to all thy treasures, which to thy War- 
burton^ thou hast entrusted. 

Lastly, come Experience, long conversant with the wise, the 
good, the learned, and the polite. Nor with them only, but with 
every kind of character, from the minister at his levee to the 
bailiff in his sponging-house, — from the duchess at her drum 
to the landlady behind her bar. From thee only can the man- 
ners of mankind be known, to which the recluse pedant, how- 
ever great his parts or extensive his learning may be, hath ever 
been a stranger. 

Come all these, — and more, if possible; for arduous is the 
task I have undertaken, and without all your assistance will, I 
find, be too heavy for me to support. But if you all smile on my 
labors, I hope still to bring them to a happy conclusion. 

JONES GOES TO A PLAY WITH MRS. MILLER AND PARTRIDGE 

... As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Den- 
mark, began. Partridge was all attention, nor did he break 
silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones 
what man that was in the strange dress; "something," said he, 
"like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armor, is 
it?" Jones answered, "That is the ghost." To which Part- 
ridge replied with a smile, "Persuade me to that, sir, if you 
can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, 
yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him, better than 
that comes to. No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such dresses 
as that, neither." 

In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbor- 
hood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, till the scene 
between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit 
to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so 

* Dr. William (later Bishop) Warburton, a learned writer on theology and literature. 



312 HENRY FIELDING 

violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. 
Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was 
afraid of the warrior upon the stage? "O la! sir," said he, "I 
perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of any- 
thing, for I know it is but a play. And if it was really a ghost, it 
could do no one no harm at such a distance, and in so much 
company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only per- 
son." 

''Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a 
coward here besides thyself?" 

" Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little 
man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any 
man frightened in my life. Ay, ay, go along with you, — ay, to 
be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? Lud have mercy upon 
such f oolhardiness ! Whatever happens, it is good enough for 
you. — Follow you? I 'd follow the devil as soon. Nay, perhaps 
it is the devil, — for they say he can put on what likeness he 
pleases. — Oh! here he is again. No farther! No, you have 
gone far enough already ; farther than I 'd have gone for all the 
king's dominions." 

Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, "Hush! hush! 
dear sir, don't you hear him? " And during the whole speech of 
the ghost, he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost and 
partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open, the same passions 
which succeeded each other in Hamlet succeeding likewise in 
him. 

When the scene was over Jones said, "Why, Partridge, you 
exceed my expectations. You enjoy the play more than I con- 
ceived possible." "Nay, sir," answered Partridge, "if you are 
not afraid of the devil, I can't help it; but to be sure, it is 
natural to be surprised at such things, though I know there is 
nothing in them. Not that it was the ghost that surprised me, 
neither; for I should have known that to have been only a man 
in a strange dress; but when I saw the little man so frightened 
himself, it was that which took hold of me." "And dost thou 
imagine, then, Partridge," cries Jones, "that he was really 
frightened?" "Nay, sir," said Partridge, "did not you your- 
self observe afterwards, when he found it was his own father's 
spirit, and how he was murdered in the garden, how his fear 
forsook him by degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow, 



TOM JONES 313 

as it were, just as I should have been had it been my own case? 
— But hush! O la! what noise is that? There he is again ! Well, 
to be certain, though I know there is nothing at all in it, I 
am glad I am not down yonder, where those men are." Then, 
turning his eyes again upon Hamlet, "Ay, you may draw 
your sword ; what signifies a sword against the power of the 
devil?" 

During the second act Partridge made very few remarks. He 
greatly admired the fineness of the dresses, nor could he help 
observing upon the king's countenance. " Well," said he, " how 
people may be deceived by faces! Nulla fides fronti^ is, I find, 
a true saying. Who would think, by looking in the king's face, 
that he had ever committed a murder?" He then inquired 
after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he should be surprised, 
gave him no other satisfaction than that he might possibly see 
him again soon, and in a flash of fire. 

Partridge sat in fearful expectation of this ; and now, when 
the ghost made his next appearance, Partridge cried out, 
" There, sir, now! what say you now? Is he frightened now, or 
no? As much frightened as you think me, — and to be sure, 
nobody can help some fears. I would not be in so bad a condi- 
tion as what 's his name, — Squire Hamlet, — is there, for all 
the world. Bless me! what's become of the spirit? As I am a 
living soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth." "Indeed, 
you saw right," answered Jones. " Well, well," cries Partridge, 
" I know it is only a play; and besides, if there was anything in 
all this. Madam Miller would not laugh so; for as to you, sir, 
you would not be afraid, I believe, if the devil was here in per- 
son. — There, there! Ay, no wonder you are in such a passion! 
Shake the vile wicked wretch to pieces ! If she was my own 
mother, I should serve her so. To be sure all duty to a mother is 
forfeited by such wicked doings. — Ay, go about your business! 
I hate the sight of you." 

Our critic was now pretty silent till the play which Hamlet 
introduces before the king. This he did not at first understand, 
till Jones explained it to him, but he no sooner entered into the 
spirit of it, than he began to bless himself that he had never 
committed murder. Then, turning to Mrs. Miller, he asked her 
if she did not imagine the king looked as if he was touched; 

1 "Put no trust in the outside." 



314 HENRY FIELDING 

"though he is," said he, " a good actor, and doth all he can to 
hide it. Well, I would not have so much to answer for as that 
wicked man there hath, to sit upon a much higher chair than he 
sits upon. No wonder he ran away; for your sake I'll never 
trust an innocent face again." 

The grave-digging scene next engaged the attention of Part- 
ridge, who expressed much surprise at the number of skulls 
thrown upon the stage. To which Jones answered that it was 
one of the most famous burial-places about town. ' ' No wonder, 
then," cries Partridge, "that the place is haunted. But I never 
saw in my life a worse grave-digger. I had a sexton, when I was 
clerk, that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. 
The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had 
ever had one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing; you had rather 
sing than work, I believe." Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull, 
he cried out, "Well! it is strange to see how fearless some men 
are. I never could bring myself to touch anything belonging to 
a dead man, on any account. He seemed frightened enough, 
too, at the ghost, I thought. Nemo omnibus horis sapit.^'^ 

Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at 
the end of which Jones asked him which of the players he had 
liked best. To this he answered, with some appearance of in- 
dignation at the question, "The king, without doubt." "In- 
deed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the 
same opinion with the town ; for they are all agreed that Ham- 
let is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." " He 
the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer. 
" Why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen 
a ghost I should have looked in the very same manner, and done 
just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called 
it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so 
fine, why, Lord help me, any man — that is, any good man — 
that had such a mother would have done exactly the same. I 
know you are only joking with me; but indeed, madam, though 
I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before 
in the country; and the king for my money. He speaks all his 
words distinctly, half as^oud again as the other. Anybody may 
see he is an actor." . . . 

' "No one is wise all the time." 



PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH 
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 

LETTERS TO HIS SON, PHILIP STANHOPE 

[Lord Chesterfield's letters to his natural son were chiefly written be- 
tween 1739 and 1754. They were published in 1774, the year following his 
death, by the son's widow, Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, who sold them to the 
publisher for £1 500. They attained immediate popularity, and were often 
reprinted; they were also frequently attacked for their cynicism andworld- 
liness. (See the comment of Dr. Johnson, quoted by Boswell, page 638, 
below.)] 

XLIII 

October 9, 1747. 

. . . People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, 
formjtheir opinion of you upon that which they have of your 
friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says very justly, 
"Tell me whom you Hve with, and I will tell you who you are." 
One may fairly suppose that a man who makes a knave or a 
fool his friend has something very bad to do or to conceal. But, 
at the same time that you carefully decline the friendship of 
knaves and fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occa- 
sion to make either of them your enemies, wantonly and un- 
provoked; for they are numerous bodies, and I would rather 
choose a secure neutrality, than alliance, or war, with either of 
them. You may be a declared enemy to their vices and follies, 
without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their 
enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship. Have. a 
real reserve with almost everybody, and have a seeming reserve 
with almost nobody; for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved, 
and very dangerous not to be so. Few people find the true me- 
dium; many are ridiculously mysterious and reserved upon 
trifles, and many imprudently communicative of all they know. 

The next thing to the choice of your friends is the choice of 
your company. Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep com- 
pany with people above you. There you rise, as much as you 
sink with people below you; for (as I have mentioned before) 
you are whatever the company you keep is. Do not mistake, 



3i6 LORD CHESTERFIELD 

when I say company above you, and think that I mean with 
regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean 
with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world con- 
siders them. 

There are two sorts of good company : one, which is called the 
heaii monde, and consists of those people who have the lead in 
courts and in the gay part of life; the other consists of those 
who are distinguished by some peculiar merit, or who excel in 
some particular and valuable art or science. For my own 
part, I used to think myself in company as much above me, 
when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, as if I had been 
with all the princes in Europe. . . . 

You may possibly ask me whether a man has it always in his 
power to get into the best company? and how? I say. Yes, he 
has, by deserving it; provided he is but in circumstances which 
enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit 
and good breeding will make their way everywhere. Know- 
ledge will introduce him, and good breeding will endear him, to 
the best companies; for, as I have often told you, politeness and 
go^d breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any or all 
other good qualities or talents. Without them no knowledge, 
no perfection whatsoever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, 
without good breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher a cynic; the 
soldier a brute; and every man disagreeable. . . . 

LVII 

February 22, 1748. 

. . . Some learned men, proud of their knowledge, only speak 
to decide, and give judgment without appeal. The consequence 
of which is, that mankind, provoked by the insult and injured 
by the oppression, revolt; and, in order to shake off the tyranny, 
even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, 
the modester you should be; and (by the by) that modesty is 
the surest way of gratifying your vanity. Even where you are 
sure, seem doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce; and, if 
you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself. 

Others, to show their learning, or often from the prejudices 
of a school education, where they hear nothing else, are always 
talking of the Ancients as something more than men, and of the 
Moderns as something less. They are never without a classic or 



LETTERS TO HIS SON 317 

two in their pockets ; they stick to the old good sense ; they read 
none of the modern trash; and will show you plainly that no 
improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these 
last seventeen hundred years. I would by no means have you 
disown your acquaintance with the ancients, but still less would 
I have you brag of an exclusive intimacy with them. Speak of 
the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without 
idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age; 
and, if you happen to have an Elzevir classic in your pocket, 
neither show it nor mention it. 

Some great scholars, most absurdly, draw all their maxims, 
both for public and private life, from what they call parallel 
cases in the ancient authors; without considering that, in the 
first place, there never were, since the creation of the world, 
two cases exactly parallel, and, in the next place, that there 
never was a case stated, or even known, by any historian, with 
every one of its circumstances, — which, however, ought to be 
known in order to be reasoned from. Reason upon the case 
itself, and the several circumstances that attend it, and act 
accordingly; but not from the authority of ancient poets or his- 
torians. Take into your consideration, if you please, cases seem- 
ingly analogous, but take them as helps only, not as guides. 
We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the an- 
cients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen; of which, 
with all due regard to antiquity, I take Leonidas and Curtius to 
have been two distinguished ones. And yet a solid pedant 
would, in a speech in Parliament relative to a tax of twopence a 
pound upon some commodity or other, quote those two heroes 
as examples of what we ought to do and suffer for our country. 
I have known these absurdities carried so far by people of inju- 
dicious learning, that I should not be surprised if some of them 
were to propose, while we are at war with the Gauls, that a 
number of geese should be kept in the Tower, upon account of 
the infinite advantage which Rome received, in a parallel case, 
from a certain number of geese in the Capitol. This way of 
reasoning and this way of speaking will always form a poor 
politician and a puerile declaimer. 

There is another species of learned men who, though less 
dogmatical and supercilious, are not less impertinent. These 
are the communicative and shining pedants, who adorn their 



3i8 LORD CHESTERFIELD 

conversation, even with women, by happy quotations of Greek 
and Latin, and who have contracted such a familiarity with 
the Greek and Roman authors that they call them by certain 
names or epithets denoting intimacy. As "old Homer," "that 
sly rogue Horace," "Maro" instead of Virgil, and "Naso " in- 
stead of Ovid. These are often imitated by coxcombs, who have 
no learning at all, but who have got some names and some 
scraps of ancient authors by heart, which they improperly 
and impertinently retail in all companies, in hopes of passing 
for scholars. If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of 
pedantry on the one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the 
other, abstain from learned ostentation. Speak the language of 
the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any 
other. Never seem wiser nor more learned than the people you 
are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private 
pocket, and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to 
show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it; 
but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman. 
Upon the whole, remember that learning (I mean Greek and 
Roman learning) is a most useful and necessary ornament, 
which it is shameful not to be master of; but, at the same time, 
most carefully avoid those errors and abuses which I have men- 
tioned, and which too often attend it. Remember, too, that 
great modern knowledge is still more necessary than ancient, 
and that you had better know perfectly the present than the 
old state of Europe; though I would have you well acquainted 
with both 

LXIV 

April 26, 1748. 
. . . Were most historical events traced up to their true 
causes, I fear we should not find them much more noble nor 
disinterested than Luther's disappointed avarice; and therefore 
I look with some contempt upon those refining and sagacious 
historians who ascribe all, even the most common events, to 
some deep political cause; whereas mankind is made up of in- 
consistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predomi- 
nant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and 
the weakest sometimes wisely. Our jarring passions, our vari- 
able humors, nay, our greater or lesser degree of health and 
spirits, produce such contradictions in our conduct that, I be- 



LETTERS TO HIS SON 319 

lieve, those are the oftenest mistaken who ascribe our actions 
to the most seemingly obvious motives. And I am convinced 
that a hght supper, and a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, 
have sometimes made a hero of the same man who, by an in- 
digestion, a restless night, and a, rainy morning, would have 
proved a coward. 

Our best conjectures, therefore, as to the true springs of 
actions, are but very uncertain, and the actions themselves are 
all that we must pretend to know from history. That Caesar 
was murdered by twenty-three conspirators, I make no doubt, 
but I very much doubt that their love of liberty, and of their 
country, was their sole or even principal motive ; and I dare say 
that, if the truth were known, we should find that many other 
motives at least concurred, even in the great Brutus himself, — 
such as pride, envy, personal pique, and disappointment. Nay, 
I cannot help carrying my pyrrhonism still further, and ex- 
tending it often to historical facts themselves, at least to most 
of the circumstances with which they are related; and every 
day's experience confirms me in this historical incredulity. Do 
we ever hear the most recent fact related exactly in the same 
way, by the several poeple who were at the same time eye-wit- 
nesses of it? No. One mistakes, another misrepresents; and 
others warp it a little to their own turn of mind, or private 
views. A man who has been concerned in a transaction will 
not write it fairly, and a man who has not cannot. . . . 

LXXVI 

September 5, 1748. 

... As women are a considerable, or at least a pretty nu- 
merous, part of company, and as their suffrages go a great 
(.way towards establishing a man's character in the fashionable 
part of the world (which is of great importance to the fortune and 
figure he proposes to make in it) , it is necessary to please them. 
I will therefore, upon this subject, let you into certain arcana, 
that will be very useful for you to know, but which you must 
with the utmost care conceal, and never seem to know. Women, 
then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an enter- 
taining tattle and sometimes wit, but for solid, reasoning good 
sense, I never in my life knew one that had it, or acted con- 
sequentially for four-and-twenty hours together. Some little 



320 LORD CHESTERFIELD 

passion or humor always breaks in upon their best resolutions. 
Their beauty neglected or controverted, their age increased, or 
their supposed understandings depreciated, instantly kindles 
their little passions, and overturns any system of consequential 
conduct that in their most reasonable moments they might 
have been capable of forming. A man of sense only trifles with 
them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does 
with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults them 
about, nor trusts them with, serious matters, though he often 
makes them believe that he does both, — which is the thing 
in the world that they are proud of; for they love mightily to 
be dabbling in business (which, by the way, they always spoil) , 
and, being justly distrustful that men in general look upon 
them in a trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks 
more seriously to them, and who seems to consult and trust 
them ; — I say, who seems, for weak men really do, but wise ones 
only seem to do it. No flattery is either too high or too low 
for them. They will greedily swallow the highest, and grate- 
fully accept of the lowest; and you may safely flatter any 
woman, from her understanding down to the exquisite taste of 
her fan. Women who are either indisputably beautiful or in- 
disputably ugly are best flattered upon the score of their under- 
standings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best 
flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every 
woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome, but, 
not hearing often that she is so, is the more grateful and the 
more obliged to the few who tell her so ; whereas a decided and 
conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid to her beauty 
only as her due, but wants to shine and to be considered on the 
side of her understanding; and a woman who is ugly enough to 
know that she is so, knows that she has nothing left for it but 
her understanding, which is consequently — and probably in 
more senses than one — her weak side. 

But these are secrets which you must keep inviolably, if you 
would not, like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by the whole sex. 
On the contrary, a" man who thinks of living in the great world 
must be gallant, polite, and attentive to please the women. 
They have, from the weakness of men, more or less influence 
in all courts; they absolutely stamp every man's character in 
the beau monde, and make it either current, or cry it down and 



I 



LETTERS TO HIS SON 321 

stop it in payments. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to 
manage, please, and flatter them, and never to discover the 
least marks of contempt, which is what they never forgive. . . . 
These are some of the hints which my long experience in the 
great world enables me to give you, and which, if you attend 
to them, may prove useful to you in your journey through 
it. . . . 

LXXXI 

October 19, 1748. 

... I need not, I believe, advise you to adapt your conver- 
sation to the people you are conversing with ; for I suppose you 
would not, without this caution, have talked upon the same 
subject and in the same manner to a minister of state, a bishop, 
a philosopher, a captain, and a woman. A man of the world 
must, like the chameleon, be able to take every different hue, 
which is by no means a criminal or abject, but a necessary, 
complaisance, for it relates only to manners, and not to morals. 

One word only as to swearing, and that I hope and believe 
is more than is necessary. You may sometimes hear some peo- 
ple in good company interlard their discourse with oaths, by 
way of embellishment, as they think; but you must observe, 
too, that those who do so are never those who contribute in 
any degree to give that company the denomination of good 
company. They are always subalterns, or people of low educa- 
tion; for that practice, besides that it has no one temptation to 
plead, is as silly and illiberal as it is wicked. 

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased 
with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh 
since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is 
therefore only seen to smile, but never heard to laugh. . . . 

CXVII 

[1749-1 
. . . Men have possibly as much vanity as women, though 
of another kind ; and both art and good breeding require that, 
instead of mortifying, you should please and flatter it, by words 
and looks of approbation. Suppose — which is by no means 
improbable — that, at your return to England, I should place 
you near the person of some one of the Royal Family. In that 
situation good breeding, engaging address, adorned with all the 



322 LORD CHESTERFIELD 

graces that dwell at courts, would very probably make you a 
favorite, and, from a favorite, a minister; but all the knowledge 
and learning in the world, without them, never would. The 
penetration of princes seldom goes deeper than the surface. It 
is the exterior that always engages their hearts, and I would 
never advise you to give yourself much trouble about their 
understandings. Princes in general (I mean those Porphyro- 
genets who are born and bred in purple) are about the pitch of 
women, bred up like them, and are to be addressed and gained 
in the same manner. They always see, they seldom weigh. Your 
lustre, not your solidity, must take them; your inside will after- 
wards support and secure what your outside has acquired. 
With weak people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in four 
of mankind), good breeding, address, and manners are every- 
thing; they can go no deeper. But let me assure you that they 
are a great deal, even with people of the best understandings. 

cxxiv 

December ig, 1749. 
... I have often told you (and it is most true) that, with 
regard to mankind, we must not draw general conclusions from 
certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. 
We must not suppose that because man is a rational animal 
he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such 
or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and 
consequentially in the pursuit of it. No; we are complicated 
machines; and though we have one main-spring that gives mo- 
tion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels which, in 
their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that mo- 
tion. Let us exemplify: I will suppose ambition to be — as it 
commonly is — the predominant passion of a minister of state, 
and I will suppose that minister an able one. Will he, therefore, 
invariably pursue the object of that predominant passion? 
May I be sure that he will do so and so, because he ought? 
Nothing less. Sickness or low spirits may damp this predomi- 
nant passion; humor and peevishness may triumph over it; 
inferior passions may at times surprise it and prevail. Is this 
ambitious statesman amorous? Indiscreet and unguarded con- 
fidences, made in tender moments, to his wife or his mistress, 
may defeat all his schemes. Is he avaricious? Some great liicra- 



LETTERS TO HIS SON 323 

tive object suddenly presenting itself may unravel all the work 
of his ambition. Is he passionate? Contradiction and provoca- 
tion (sometimes, it may be, too, artfully intended) may extort 
rash and inconsiderate expressions or actions, destructive of his 
main object. Is he vain and open to flattery? An artful flatter- 
ing favorite may mislead him. And even laziness may, at cer- 
tain moments, make him neglect or omit the necessary steps to 
that height which he wants to arrive at. Seek first, then, for 
the predominant passion of the character which you mean to 
engage and influence, and address yourself to it, but without 
defying or despising the inferior passions; get them in your 
interest too, for now and then they will have their turns. In 
many cases you may not have it in your power to contribute to 
the gratification of the prevailing passion; then take the next 
best to your aid. There are many avenues to every man, and 
when you cannot get at him through the great one, try the 
serpentine ones, and you will arrive at last. . . . 



THOMAS GRAY 

LETTERS 

[Gray's letters were chiefly addressed to his friends Richard West, 
Thomas Wharton, Horace Walpole, William Mason, and Norton Nich- 
ols. Some were published (in very imperfect form) by Mason in 1775; 
others in 1816, 1843, etc.] 

TO RICHARD WEST 

May 27, 1742. 

Mine, you are to know, is a white melancholy, or rather 
leucocholy for the most part, which, though it seldom laughs or 
dances, nor ever amounts to what one calls joy or pleasure, yet 
is a good easy sort of state, and ^a ne laisse que de s^amuser. 
The only fault is its insipidity, which is apt now and then to 
give a sort of ennui, which makes one form certain little wishes 
that signify nothing. But there is another sort, black indeed, 
which I have now and then felt, that has somewhat in it like 
Tertullian's rule of faith, Credo quia impossihile est; for it be- 
lieves, nay, is sure of everything that is unlikely, so it be but 
frightful ; and on the other hand excludes and shuts its eyes to 
the most possible hopes, and everything that is pleasurable. 
From this the Lord deliver us! for none but He and sunshiny 
weather can do it. In hopes of enjoying this kind of 'weather, I 
am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never 
the nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will 
continue to write. My life is like Harry the Fourth's supper of 
hens, " poulets a la broche, poulets en ragout, poulets en hachis, 
poulets en fricassees." Reading here, reading there; nothing 
but books with different sauces. Do not let me lose my des- 
sert, then; for though that be reading too, yet it has a very dif- 
ferent flavor. . . . 

TO HORACE WALPOLE 
, Feb. II, 1751. 

As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you 
must assist me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yes- 
terday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain 



LETTERS 325 

gentlemen (as their bookseller expresses it) who have taken the 
Magazine of Magazines into their hands. They tell me that an 
"ingenious" poem, called "Reflections in a Country Church- 
yard," has been communicated to them, which they are printing 
forthwith; that they are informed that the "excellent" author 
of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his "indulgence," 
but the " honor" of his correspondence, etc. As I am not at all 
disposed to be either so indulgent or so correspondent as they 
desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honor they 
would inflict upon me ; and therefore am obliged to desire you 
would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done 
in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my 
name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best 
paper and character. He must correct the press himself, and 
print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the 
sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title 
must be, "Elegy, written in a Country Church-yard." If he 
would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by acci- 
dent, I should like it better. If you behold the Magazine of 
Magazines in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give 
yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of 
your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this im- 
mediately, he may as well let it alone. 

TO HORACE WALPOLE 

January, 1753. 

I am at present at Stoke, to which place I came at half an 
hour's warning upon the news I received of my mother's illness, 
and did not expect to have found her alive ; but when I arrived 
she was much better, and continues so. I shall therefore be 
very glad to make you a visit at Strawberry Hill, whenever 
you give me notice of a convenient time. I am surprised at the 
print, ^ which far surpasses my idea of London graving; the 
drawing itself was so finished that I suppose it did not require 
all the art I had imagined to copy it tolerably. My aunts, see- 
ing me open your letter, took it to be a burying ticket, and 
asked whether anybody had left me a ring; and so they still 
conceive it to be, even with all their spectacles on. Heaven 
forbid they should suspect it to belong to any verses of mine, — 

* The proof of a print designed for the Elegy, representing a funeral scene. 



326 THOMAS GRAY 

they would burn me for a poet. . . . This I know, if you 
suffer my head to be printed, you will infallibly put me out 
of mine. I conjure you immediately to put a stop to any 
such design. Who is at the expense of engraving it, I know 
not; but if it be Dodsley, I will make up the loss to him. The 
thing as it was, I know, will make me ridiculous enough; but 
to appear in proper person, at the head of my works, consisting 
of half a dozen ballads in thirty pages, would be worse than 
the pillory. I do assure you, if I had received such a book, 
with such a frontispiece, without any warning, I beheve it 
would have given me a palsy. Therefore I rejoice to have re- 
ceived this notice, and shall not be easy till you tell me all 
thoughts of it are laid aside. . . . 

TO THOMAS WHARTON 

Sept. 1 8, 1754. 

I rejoice to find you at last settled to your heart's content, 
and deUght to hear you talk of giving your house some " Gothic 
ornaments" already. If you project anything, I hope it will be 
entirely within doors; and don't let me (when I come gaping 
into Coleman Street) be directed to the gentleman's at the Ten 
Pinnacles, or with the church porch at his door. I am glad you 
enter into the spirit of Strawberry Castle.^ It has a purity and 
propriety of Gothicism in it (with very few exceptions) that I 
have not seen elsewhere. The eating-room and library were not 
completed when I was there, and I want to know what effect 
they have. My Lord Radnor's vagaries, I see, did not keep you 
from doing justice to his situation, which far surpasses every- 
thing near it; and I do not know a more laughing scene than 
that about Twickenham and Richmond. . . . 

TO REV. WILLIAM MASON^ 

Dec. 19, 1757. 

Though I very well know the bland, emollient, saponaceous 
qualities of both sack and silver, yet if any great man would say 
to me, "I make you rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of 
£300 a year and two butts of the best Malaga ; and though it 
has been usual to catch a mouse or two, for form's sake, in pub- 

* Walpole's country-seat. See his letter, page 469, below. 

' At the time when Gray's name had been mentioned for the vacant post of Poet 
Laureate. 



LETTERS 327 

lie once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall not stand upon these 
things," I cannot say I should jump at it. Nay, if they would 
drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure to the 
King's Majesty, I should still feel a little awkward, and think 
everybody I saw smelt a rat about me. But I do not pretend to 
blame any one else that has not the same sensations ; for my 
part I would rather be sergeant trumpeter or pinmaker to the 
palace. Nevertheless I interest myself a little in the history of 
it, and rather wish somebody may accept it that will retrieve 
the credit of the thing, if it be retrievable, or ever had any credit. 
Rowe was, I think, the last man of character that had it. As to 
Settle, whom you mention, he belonged to my Lord Mayor, not 
to the king. Eusden was a person of great hopes in his youth, 
though at last he turned out a drunken parson. Dryden was 
as disgraceful to the office, from his character, as the poorest 
scribbler could have been from his verses. The office itself has 
always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when 
kings were somebody) , if he were a poor writer by making him 
more conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at 
war with the little fry of his own profession, — for there are 
poets Httle enough to envy even a poet laureate. . . . 

TO RICHARD STONEHEWER 

August 18, 1758. 
. . . You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury 
came to be a philosopher in vogue. I will tell you. First, he was 
a lord; 2dly, he was as vain as any of his readers; 3dly, men 
are very prone to beHeve what they do not understand; 4thly, 
they will believe anything at all, provided they are under no 
obligation to believe it; 5thly, they love to take a new road, 
even when that road leads nowhere ; 6thly, he was reckoned a 
fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said. 
Would you have anymore reasons? An interval of above forty 
years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks 
but with commoners ; vanity is no longer interested in the mat- 
ter, for the new road has become an old one. The mode of free- 
thinking is like that of ruffs and farthingales, and has given 
place to the mode of not thinking at all. Once it was reckoned 
graceful half to discover and half conceal the mind, but now 
we have been long accustomed to see it quite naked ; primness 



328 THOMAS GRAY 

and affectation of style, like the good breeding of Queen Anne's 
court, has turned to hoydening and rude familiarity. . . . 

TO HORACE WALPOLE 

[1760.] 

I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, ^ 
that I cannot help giving you the trouble to enquire a httle 
farther about them, and should wish to see a few lines of the 
original, that I may form some slight idea of the language, the 
measures, and the rhythm. 

Is there anything known of the author or authors, and of 
what antiquity are they supposed to be? Is there any more to 
be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching to it? I have been 
often told that the poem called "Hardicanute"^ (which I al- 
ways admired and still admire) was the work of somebody that 
hved a few years ago. This I do not at all believe, though it has 
evidently been retouched in places by some modern hand. But 
however, I am authorized by this report to ask whether the 
two poems in question are certainly antique and genuine. I 
make this inquiry in quality of an antiquary, and am not other- 
wise concerned about it; for if I were sure that any one now 
Uving in Scotland had written them, to divert himself and 
laugh at the credulity of the world, I would undertake a journey 
into the Highlands only for the pleasure of seeing him. 

TO THOMAS WHARTON 

[1760.] 

... If you have seen Stonehewer he has probably told you of 
my old Scotch (or rather Irish) poetry. I am gone mad about 
them. They are said to be translations (literal and in prose) 
from the Erse tongue, done by one Macpherson, a young cler- 
gyman in the Highlands. He means to pubUsh a collection he 
has of these specimens of antiquity, if it be antiquity; but what 
plagues me is, I cannot come at any certainty on that head. I 
was so struck, so extasie with their infinite beauty, that I writ 
into Scotland to make a thousand inquiries. The letters I have 
in return are ill wrote, ill reasoned, unsatisfactory, calculated 
(one would imagine) to deceive one, and yet not cunning enough 

1 Some of Macpherson's Ossianic papers, still unpublished. 

' Made public by Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, and published in 1719 as an ancient 
poem; supposed to be largely her own work. 



LETTERS 329 

to do it cleverly. In short, the whole external evidence would 
make one beheve these fragments (for so he calls them, though 
nothing can be more entire) counterfeit; but the internal is so 
strong on the other side, that I am resolved to beheve them 
genuine, spite of the Devil and the Kirk. It is impossible to con- 
vince me that they were invented by the same man that writes 
me these letters. On the other hand it is almost as hard to 
suppose, if they are original, that he should be able to translate 
them so admirably. What can one do? Since Stonehewer went, 
I have received another of a very different and inferior kind 
(being merely descriptive), — much more modern than the 
former, he says, yet very old too; this too in its way is ex- 
tremely fine. In short this man is the very Dasmon of poetry, 
or he has lighted on a treasure hid for ages. . . . 

TO HORACE WALPOLE 

Feb. 25, 1768. 
To your friendly accusation I am glad I can plead not guilty 
with a safe conscience. Dodsley told me in the spring that the 
plates from Mr. Bentley's designs ^ were worn out, and he 
wanted to have them copied and reduced to a smaller scale for a 
new edition. I dissuaded him from so silly an expense, and de- 
sired he would put in no ornaments at all. The "Long Story" 
was to be totally omitted, as its only use — that of explaining 
the prints — was gone; but to supply the place of it in bulk, 
lest my "works " should be mistaken for the works of a flea or a 
pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of poetry or 
prose. So, since my return hither, I put up about two ounces of 
stuff, viz. the "Fatal Sisters," the "Descent of Odin" (of both 
which you have copies), a bit of something from the Welsh, and 
certain little notes, partly from justice — to acknowledge the 
debt where I had borrowed anything, — partly from ill temper, 
just to tell the gentle reader that Edward I was not Ohver 
Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor. This is 
hterally all; and with all this, I shall be but a shrimp of an 
author. I gave leave also to print the same thing at Glasgow, 
but I doubt my packet has miscarried, for I hear nothing of its 
arrival as yet. To what you say to me so civilly, that I ought to 

1 One of Gray's volumes (1753) had been published under the title Designs by Mr. R. 
Bentley for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray. 



330 THOMAS GRAY 

write more, I reply in your own words (like the pamphleteer, 
who is going to confute you out of your own mouth), What has 
one to do, when " turned of fifty," but really to think of finish- 
ing? However, I will be candid, for you seem to be so with me, 
and avow to you that till fourscore-and-ten, whenever the hu- 
mor takes me, I will write, because I like it; and because I hke 
myself much better when I do so. If I do not write much, it 
is because I cannot. . . . 

Mr. Boswell's book^ I was going to recommend to you, when 
I received your letter; it has pleased and moved me strangely, 
— all, I mean, that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two 
thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves what I 
have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valu- 
able book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and 
saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's truth I have not the least 
suspicion, because I am sure he could invent nothing of this 
kind. The true title of this part of his work is, A Dialogue be- 
tween a Green- Goose and a Hero. . . . 

^ An Account of Corsica . . . and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. 



THOMAS WARTON 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAIRY QUEEN OF SPENSER 

1754 

[The date above given is that of the first edition of the Observations, but 
the extracts are reprinted from the enlarged edition of 1762; they include 
portions of Sections 1 and x, and of the Postscript. This book was the first 
critical work deahng with an English author to follow the methods char-' 
acteristic of modern scholarship. Its appreciation of certain aspects of 
Spenser's poetry also gives it an important place in the history of the so- 
called "romantic movement."] 

... It is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser 
by precepts which they did not attend to. We who live in the 
days of writing by rule, are apt to try every composition by 
those laws which we have been taught to think the sole crite- 
rion of excellence. Critical taste is universally diffused, and we 
require the same order and design which every modern perform- 
ance is expected to have, in poems where they never were 
regarded or intended. Spenser, and the same may be said of 
Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the 
careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sen- 
sibility. It was his business to engage the fancy, and to interest 
the attention, by bold and striking images, in the formation 
and the disposition of which little labor or art was applied. 
The various and the marvelous were the chief sources of dehght. 
Hence we find our author ransacking alike the regions of reality 
and romance, of truth and fiction, to find the proper decora- 
tions and furniture for his fairy structure. Born in such an age, 
Spenser wrote rapidly from his own feelings, which at the same 
time were naturally noble. Exactness in his poem would have 
been like the cornice which a painter introduced in the grotto 
of Calypso. Spenser's beauties are like the flowers in Paradise, 

which not nice art 
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon 
Pour'd forth profuse, on hill and dale and plain, 
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote 
The open field, or where the unpierc'd shade 
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers. 



332 THOMAS WARTON 

If the Fairy Queen be destitute of that arrangement and 
economy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret 
the loss of these while their place is so amply supplied by some- 
thing which more powerfully attracts us ; something which en- 
gages the affections, the feeUngs of the heart, rather than the 
cold approbation of the head. If there be any poem whose 
graces please because they are situated beyond the reach of art, 
and where the force and faculties of creative imagination de- 
light, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of 
deliberate judgment, it is this. In reading Spenser if the critic 
is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported. . . . 

^ In reading the works of a poet who Uved in a remote age, it is 
necessary that we should look back upon the customs and man- 
ners which prevailed in that age. We should endeavor to place 
ourselves in the writer's situation and circumstances. Hence we 
shall become better enabled to discover how his turn of think- 
ing and manner of composing were influenced by familiar ap- 
pearances and estabhshed objects, which are utterly different 
from those with which we are at present surrounded. For want 
of this caution, too many readers view the knights and damsels, 
the tournaments and enchantments, of Spenser with modern 
eyes, never considering that the encounters of chivalry sub- 
sisted in our author's age; that romances were then most eag- 
erly and universally studied; and that consequently Spenser, 
from the fashion of the times, was induced to undertake a 
recital of chivalrous achievements, and to become, in short, a 
romantic poet. 

Spenser in this respect copied real manners no less than 
Homer. A sensible historian ^ observes that "Homer copied 
true natural manners, which, however rough and uncultivated, 
will always form an agreeable and interesting picture; but the 
pencil of the English poet [Spenser] was employed in drawing 
the affectations and conceits and fopperies of chivalry." This, 
however, was nothing more than an imitation of real Ufe; as 
much, at least, as the plain descriptions in Homer, which cor- 
responded to the simplicity of manners then subsisting in 
Greece. Spenser, in the address of the Shepherd's Calendar to 
Sir Philip Sidney, couples his patron's learning with his skill in 

' Hume. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAIRY QUEEN 333 

chivalry, a topic of panegyric which would sound very odd in a 
modern dedication, especially before a set of pastorals. " To 
the noble and virtuous gentleman, most worthy of all titles, 
both of Learning and Chivalry, Master Philip Sidney," — 

Go, little book, thyself present, 
As child whose parent is unkent. 
To him that is the president 
Of nobleness and chivalry. 

Nor is it sufficiently considered that a popular practice of 
Spenser's age contributed, in a considerable degree, to make 
him an allegorical poet. We should remember that in this age 
allegory was appHed as the subject and foundation of pubHc 
shows and spectacles, which were exhibited with a magnifi- 
cence superior to that of former times. The virtues and vices, 
distinguished by their respective emblematical types, were fre- 
quently personified, and represented by living actors. These 
figures bore a chief part in furnishing what they called pageants, 
which were then the principal species of entertainment, and 
were shown not only in private, or upon the stage, but very 
often in the open streets for solemnizing public occasions, or 
celebrating any grand event. As a proof of what is here men- 
tioned, I refer the reader to Holinshed's Description of the 
Show of Manhood and Desert, exhibited at Norwich before Queen 
Elizabeth, and more particularly to that historian's account of 
a tourney performed by Fulke Greville, the Lords Arundel and 
Windsor, and Sir Philip Sidney, who are feigned to be the chil- 
dren of Desire, attempting to win the Fortress of Beauty. In 
the composition of the last spectacle no small share of poetical 
invention appears. . . . 

After the Fairy Queen, allegory began to decline, and by de- 
grees gave place to a species of poetry whose images were of the 
metaphysical and abstracted kind. This fashion evidently took 
its rise from the predominant studies of the times, in which the 
disquisitions of school divinity, and the perplexed subtilties of 
philosophic disputation, became the principal pursuits of the 
learned. 

Then Una fair gan drop her princely mien. 

James I is contemptuously called a pedantic monarch. But 
surely nothing could be more serviceable to the interests of 



334 THOMAS WARTON 

learning, at its infancy, than this supposed foible. "To stick the 
doctor's chair into the throne" was to patronize the Hterature 
of the times. In a more enlightened age, the same attention to 
letters and love of scholars might have produced proportionable 
effects on sciences of real utihty. This cast of mind in the king, 
however indulged in some cases to an ostentatious affectation, 
was at least innocent. 

Allegory, notwithstanding, unexpectedly rekindled some 
faint sparks of its native splendor in the Purple Island of 
Fletcher, with whom it almost as soon disappeared; when a 
poetry succeeded in which imagination gave way to correctness, 
sublimity of description to delicacy of sentiment, and majestic 
imagery to conceit and epigram. Poets began now to be more 
attentive to words than to things and objects. The nicer beau- 
ties of happy expression were preferred to the daring strokes of 
great conception. Satire, that bane of the sublime, was im- 
ported from France. The Muses were debauched at court, and 
polite life and familiar manners became their only themes. The 
simple dignity of Milton was either entirely neglected, or mis- 
taken for bombast and insipidity, by the refined readers of a 
dissolute age, whose taste and morals were equally vitiated. . . . 

. . . Mechanical critics will perhaps be disgusted at the Hber- 
ties I have taken in introducing so many anecdotes of ancient 
chivalry. But my subject required frequent proofs of this sort. 
Nor could I be persuaded that such inquiries were, in other 
respects, either useless or ridiculous, as they tended at least to 
illustrate an institution of no frivolous or indifferent nature. 
Chivalry is commonly looked upon as a barbarous sport or ex- 
travagant amusement of the dark ages. It had, however, no 
small influence on the manners, policies, and constitutions of 
ancient times, and served many public and important purposes. 
It was the school of fortitude, honor, and affability. Its exer- 
cises, like the Grecian games, habituated the youth to fatigue 
and enterprise, and inspired the noblest sentiments of heroism. 
It taught gallantry and civility to a savage and ignorant people, 
and humanized the native ferocity of the northern nations. It 
conduced to refine the manners of the combatants by exciting 
an emulation in the devices and accoutrements, the splendor 
and parade, of their tilts and tournaments; while its magnifi- 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAIRY QUEEN 335 

cent festivals, thronged with noble dames and courteous 
knights, produced the first efforts of wit and fancy. 

I am still further to hope that, together with other specimens 
of obsolete literature in general, hinted at before, the many 
references I have made in particular to romances, the necessary 
appendage of ancient chivalry, will also plead their pardon. For 
however monstrous and unnatural these compositions may 
appear to this age of reason and refinement, they merit more 
attention than the world is willing to bestow. They preserve 
many curious historical facts, and throw considerable light on 
the nature of the feudal system. They are the pictures of an- 
cient usages and customs, and represent the manners, genius, 
and character of our ancestors. Above all, such are their terri- 
ble graces of magic and enchantment, so magnificently mar- 
velous are their fictions and fablings, that they contribute in a 
wonderful degree to rouse and invigorate all the powers of im- 
agination, to store the fancy with those sublime and alarming 
images which true poetry best delights to display. . . . 



JOSEPH WARTON 

AN ESSAY ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF POPE 

1756, 1782 

[The two volumes of this work were published with an interval of 
twenty-six years between them ; but the opening dedication and the con- 
cluding summary, here reproduced, show the same attitude toward the 
nature of poetry, — anticipating certain elements of the "romantic" 
position.] 

DEDICATION 

... I REVERE the memory of Pope, I respect and honor his 
abilities; but I do not think him at the head of his profession. 
In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, 
he is superior to all mankind ; and I only say that this species of 
poetry is not the most excellent one of the art. 

We do not, it should seem, sufficiently attend to the differ- 
ence there is betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true 
poet. Donne and Swift were undoubtedly men of wit, and men 
of sense, but what traces have they left of pure poetry? It is 
remarkable that Dryden said of Donne, "He was the greatest 
wit, though not the greatest poet, of this nation." Fontenelle 
and La Motte are entitled to the former character, but what 
can they urge to gain the latter ? Which of these characters 
is the most valuable and useful, is entirely out of the ques- 
tion; all I plead for is to have their several provinces kept dis- 
tinct from each other, and to impress on the reader that a clear 
head and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make 
a poet ; that the most solid observations on human life, expressed 
with the utmost elegance and brevity, are morality, and not 
poetry; that the Epistles of Boileau in rhyme are no more poeti- 
cal than the Characters of La Bruyere in prose; and that it is a 
creative and glowing imagination, acer spiritus ac vis, and that 
alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and very un- 
common character, which so few possess, and of which so few 
can properly judge. 

For one person who can adequately relish and enjoy a work 



GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF POPE 337 

of imagination, twenty are to be found who can taste and judge 
of observations on familiar life and the manners of the age. The 
Satires of Ariosto are more read than the Orlando Furioso, or 
even Dante. Are there so many cordial admirers of Spenser and 
Milton as of Hudihras, if we strike out of the number of these 
supposed admirers those who appear such out of fashion, and 
not of feeling? Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry is far more popular 
than Akenside's noble Ode to Lord Huntingdon. The Epistles on 
the Characters of Men and Women, and your sprightly Satires, 
my good friend,^ are more frequently perused and quoted 
than V Allegro and II Penseroso of Milton. Had you written 
only these satires, you would, indeed, have gained the title of a 
man of wit, and a man of sense, but, I am confident, would not 
insist on being denominated a poet merely on their account, j 

Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis.^ 

It is amazing this matter should ever have been mistaken, 
when Horace has taken particular and repeated pains to settle 
and adjust the opinion in question. He has more than once dis- 
claimed all right and title to the name of poet on the score of his 
ethic and satiric pieces. 

— Neque enim condudere versum 
Dixeris esse sails — ' . 

are lines often repeated, but whose meaning is not extended 
and weighed as it ought to be. Nothing can be more judicious 
than the method he prescribes, of trying whether any composi- 
tion be essentially poetical or not, — which is, to drop entirely 
the measures and numbers, and transpose and invert the order 
of the words, and in this unadorned manner to peruse the pas- 
sage. If there be really in it a true poetical spirit, all your in- 
versions and transpositions will not disguise and extinguish it, 
but it will retain its lustre, like a diamond unset and thrown 
back into the rubbish of the mine. 

Let us make a little experiment on the following well-known 
lines: " Yes, you despise the man that is confined to books, who 
rails at human-kind from his study, though what he learns, he 
speaks, and may perhaps advance some general maxims, or may 
be right by chance. The coxcomb bird, so grave and so talka- 

' Edward Young. 

^ "It does not suffice to write verse in ordinary language." 

• "You would not say it is enough merely to round out a verse." 



338 JOSEPH WARTON 

tive, that cries Whore, Knave, and Cuckold, from his cage, 
though he rightly call many a passenger, you hold him no phil- 
osopher. And yet, such is the fate of all extremes, men may be 
read too much, as well as books. We grow more partial, for the 
sake of the observer, to observations which we ourselves make ; 
less so to written wisdom, because another's. Maxims are drawn 
from notions, and those from guess." ^ 

What shall we say of this passage? Why, that it is most ex- 
cellent sense, but just as poetical as the Qui jitMcBcenas^ of the 
author who recommends this method of trial. Take ten Hnes of 
the Iliad, Paradise Lost, or even of the Georgic of Virgil, and see 
whether, by any process of critical chemistry, you can lower 
and reduce them to the tameness of prose. You will find that 
they will appear like Ulysses in his disguise of rags, still a hero, 
though lodged in the cottage of the herdsman Eumaeus. 
' The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all 
genuine poetry. What is there transcendently sublime or pa- 
thetic in Pope? In his works there is, indeed, nihil inane, nihil 
arcessilum; puro tamen fonti quam magna flumini propior,^ as 
the excellent Quintilian remarks of Lysias. And because I am, 
perhaps, unwilling to speak out in plain English, I will adopt the 
following passage of Voltaire, which in my opinion as exactly 
characterizes Pope as it does his model Boileau, for whom it was 
originally designed: "Incapable peut-etre du sublime qui el eve 
Tame, et du sentiment qui I'attendrit, mais fait pour eclairer 
ceux a qui la nature accorda I'un et I'autre, laborieux, severe, 
precis, pur, harmonieux, il devint, enfin, le poete de la Raison." 

Our English poets may, I think, be disposed in four different 
classes and degrees. In the first class I would place our only 
three sublime and pathetic poets: Spenser, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton. In the second class should be ranked such as possessed the 
true'poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had 
noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poesy. At the 
head of these are Dryden, Prior, Addison, Cowley, Waller, 
Garth, Fenton, Gay, Denham, Parnell. In the third class may 
be placed men of wit, of elegant taste and lively fancy in de- 
scribing familiar life, though not the higher scenes of poetry. 

' A paraphrase of the opening lines of Pope's Epistle I {Moral Essays). 
* Horace's first satire. 

» "Nothing superfluous, nothing far-fetched; yet he is more like a pure spring than a 
great river." 



GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF POPE 339 

Here may be numbered Butler, Swift, Rochester, Donne, 
Dorsetj Oldham. In the fourth class, the mere versifiers, how- 
ever smooth and mellifluous some of them may be thought, 
should be disposed; such as Pitt, Sandys, Fairfax, Broome, 
Buckingham, I.ansdowne. This enumeration is not intended 
as a complete catalogue of writers, and in their proper order, 
but only to mark out briefly the different species of our cele- 
brated authors. In which of these classes Pope deserves to be 
placed, the following work is intended to determine. 

CONCLUSION 

Thus have I endeavored to give a critical account, with free- 
dom, but it is hoped with impartiality, of each of Pope's works; 
by which review it will appear that the largest portion of them 
is of the didactic, moral, and satiric kind, and consequently not 
of the most poetic species of poetry. Whence it is manifest that 
good sense and judgment were his characteristical excellencies, 
rather than fancy and invention ; — not that the author of The 
Rape pf the Lock and Eloisa can be thought to want imagina- 
tion, but because his imagination was not his predominant 
talent, because he indulged it not, and because he gave not so 
many proofs of this talent as of the other. This turn of mind 
led him to admire French models; he studied Boileau atten- 
tively, formed himself upon him, as Milton formed himself upon 
the Grecian and Italian sons of Fancy. He stuck to describing 
modern manners; but those manners, because they are famiHar, 
uniform, artificial, and polished, are in their very nature unfit 
for any lofty effort of the Muse. He gradually became one of 
the most correct, even, and exact poets that ever wrote, polish- 
ing his pieces with a care and assiduity that no business or 
avocation ever interrupted; so that if he does not frequently 
ravish and transport his reader, yet he does not disgust him 
with unexpected inequalities and absurd improprieties. What- 
ever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed, he withheld and 
stifled.' The perusal of him affects not our minds with such 
strong emotions as we feel from Homer and Milton, so that no 
man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads 
them. Hence he is a writer fit for universal perusal, adapted to 
all ag( jj<i sLciLuuj- or the old and for the young, the man of, 
busin< : and the schc ir. He who would think the Fairy Queen y 



340 JOSEPH WARTON 

Palamon and Arcite, The Tempest, or Comus childish and ro- 
mantic, might rehsh Pope. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly 
encomium to say he is the great Poet of Reason, the first of 
ethical authors in verse. And this species of writing is, after all, 
the surest road to an extensive reputation. It Ues more level to 
the general capacities of men than the higher flights of more 
genuine poetry. We all remember when even a Churchill was 
more in vogue than a Gray. He that treats of fashionable 
follies, and the topics of the day, that describes present persons 
and recent events, finds many readers, whose understandings 
and whose passions he gratifies. The name of Chesterfield on 
one hand, and of Walpole on the other, failed not to make a 
poem bought up and talked of. And it cannot be doubted that 
the Odes of Horace which celebrated, and the Satires which 
ridiculed, well-known and real characters at Rome, were more 
eagerly read, and more frequently cited, than the ^neid and the 
Georgics of Virgil. 

Where, then, according to the question proposed at the be- 
ginning of this Essay, shall we with justice be authorized to 
place our admired Pope? Not, assuredly, in the same rank with 
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, however justly we may ap- 
plaud the Eloisa and Rape of the Lock; but, considering the cor- 
rectness, elegance, and utility of his works, the weight of senti- 
ment and the knowledge of man they contain, we may venture 
to assign him a place next to Milton, and just above Dryden. 
Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make this decision, we must 
forget, for a moment, the divine Music Ode of Dryden, and may, 
perhaps, then be compelled to confess that, though Dryden be 
the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist. 

The preference here given to Pope above other modern Eng- 
lish poets, it must be remembered, is founded on the excellen- 
cies of his works in general, and taken all together; for there are 
parts and passages in other modern authors, — in Young and 
in Thomson, for instance, — equal to any of Pope, and he has 
written nothing in a strain so truly sublime as The Bard of Gray. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

THE RAMBLER 

[This periodical was published twice a week, from March, 1750, 
to March, 1752; Johnson himself writing all but five papers. See 
Boswell's account of its origin and character, page 630, below. In 
periodical form the Rambler papers did not circulate largely, but when 
collected they ran into more than ten editions during Jphnson's life- 
time.] 

No. 102. Saturday, March 9, 1751 

Ipsa quoque assiduo labuntur iempora molu, 

Non secus ac flumen : neque enim consistere flumen, 

Nee levis hora potest; sed ut unda impellitur undd, 

Urgeturque prior veniente, urgetque priorem, 

Tempora sic fugiunt pariter, pariterque sequuntur. — Ovid. 

With constant motion as the moments glide, 

Behold in running life the rolling tide ! 

For none can stem by art, or stop by pow'r, 

The flowing ocean, or the fleeting hour : 

But wave by wave pursued arrives on shore, 

And each impell'd behind impels before : 

So time on time revolving we descry ; 

So minutes follow, and so minutes fly. — Elphinston. 

"Life," says Seneca, ''is a voyage, in the progress of which 
we are perpetually changing our scenes; we first leave child- 
hood behind us, then youth, then the years of ripened manhood, 
then the better and more pleasing part of old age." The perusal 
of this passage having incited in me a train of reflections on the 
state of man, — the incessant fluctation of his wishes, the grad- 
ual change of his disposition to all external objects, and the 
thoughtlessness with which he floats along the stream of time, 
I sunk into a slumber amidst my meditations, and on a sud- 
den found my ears filled with the tumult of labor, the shouts of 
alacrity, the shrieks of alarm, the whistle of winds, and the dash 
of waters. 

My astonishment for a time repressed my curiosity; but 
soon recovering myself so far as to inquire whither we were 



342 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

going, and what was the cause of such clamor and confusion, I 
was told that we were launching out into the " ocean of life"; 
that we had already passed the straits of infancy, in which mul- 
titudes had perished, some by the weakness and fragility of their 
vessels, and more by the folly, perverseness, or neghgence of 
those who undertook to steer them; and that we were now on 
the main sea, abandoned to the winds and billows, without any 
other means of security than the care of the pilot, whom it was 
always in our power to choose among great numbers that offered 
their direction and assistance. 

I then looked round with anxious eagerness ; and, first turning 
my eyes behind me, saw a stream flowing through flowery is- 
lands, which every one that sailed along seemed to behold with 
pleasure, but no sooner touched than the current — which, 
though not noisy or turbulent, was yet irresistible — bore him 
away. Beyond these islands all was darkness, nor could any of 
the passengers describe the shore at which he first embarked. 

Before me, and on each side, was an expanse of waters vio- 
lently agitated, and covered with so thick a mist that the most 
perspicacious eye could see but a Httle way. It appeared to be 
full of rocks and whirlpools, for many sunk unexpectedly while 
they were courting the gale with full sails, and insulting those 
whom they had left behind. So numerous, indeed, were the 
dangers, and so thick the darkness, that no caution could confer 
security. Yet there were many who, by false intelligence, be- 
trayed their followers into whirlpools, or by violence pushed 
those whom they found in their way against the rocks. 

The current was invariable and insurmountable ; but though 
it was impossible to sail against it, or to return to the place that 
was once passed, yet it was not so violent as to allow no oppor- 
tunities for dexterity or courage, since, though none could re- 
treat back from danger, yet they might often avoid it by obHque 
direction. 

It was, however, not very common to steer with much care or 
prudence; for, by some universal infatuation, every man ap- 
peared to think himself safe, though he saw his consorts every 
moment sinking round him ; and no sooner had the waves closed 
over them, than their fate and their misconduct were forgotten. 
The voyage was pursued with the same jocund confidence; 
every man congratulated himself upon the soundness of his 



THE RAMBLER 343 

vessel, and believed himself able to stem the whirlpool in which 
his friend was swallowed, or ghde over the rocks on which he 
was dashed ; nor was it often observed that the sight of a wreck 
made any man change his course : if he turned aside for a mo- 
ment, he soon forgot the rudder, and left himself again to the 
disposal of chance. 

Thi§ negligence did not proceed from indifference, or from 
weariness of their present condition; for not one of those who 
thus rushed upon destruction, failed, when he was sinking, to 
call loudly upon his associates for that help which could not 
now be given him ; and many spent their last moments in cau- 
tioning others against the folly by which they were intercepted 
in the midst of their course. Their benevolence was sometimes 
praised, but their admonitions were unregarded. 

The vessels in which we had embarked, being confessedly 
unequal to the turbulence of the stream of life, were visibly 
impaired in the course of the voyage; so that every passenger 
was certain that, how long soever he might, by favorable acci- 
dents or by incessant vigilance, be preserved, he must sink at 
last. 

This necessity of perishing might have been expected to sad- 
den the gay, and intimidate the daring, at least to keep the 
melancholy and timorous in perpetual torments, and hinder 
them from any enjoyment of the varieties and gratifications 
which nature offered them as the solace of their labors; yet, in 
effect, none seemed less to expect destruction than those to 
whom it was most dreadful. They all had the art of concealing 
their danger from themselves; and those who knew their inabil- 
ity to bear the sight of the terrors that embarrassed their way, 
took care never to look forward, but found some amusement 
for the present moment, and generally entertained themselves 
by playing with Hope, who was the constant associate of the 
\ voyage of life. 

\ ' Yet all that Hope ventured to promise, even to those whom 
she favored most, was, not that they should escape, but that 
they should sink last; and with this promise every one was satis- 
fied, though he laughed at the rest for seeming to believe it. 
Hope, indeed, apparently mocked the credulity of her compan- 
ions; for, in proportion as their vessels grew leaky, she redoubled 
her assurances of safety; and none were more busy in making 



344 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

provisions for a long voyage, than they whom all but themselves 
saw likely to perish soon by irreparable decay. 

In the midst of the current of life was the Gulf of Intemper- 
ance, a dreadful whirlpool, interspersed with rocks, of which 
the pointed crags were concealed under water, and the tops 
covered with herbage, on which Ease spread couches of repose, 
and with shades where Pleasure warbled the song of invita- 
tion. Within sight of these rocks all who sailed on the ocean of 
life must necessarily pass. Reason, indeed, was always at 
hand to steer the passengers through a narrow outlet by which 
they might escape; but very few could, by her entreaties or re- 
monstrances, be induced to put the rudder into her hand, with- 
out stipulating that she should approach so near unto the rocks 
of Pleasure that they might solace themselves with a short 
enjoyment of that delicious region, after which they always 
determined to pursue their course without any other deviation. 

Reason was too often prevailed upon so far by these pro- 
mises, as to venture her charge within the eddy of the Gulf of 
Intemperance, where, indeed, the circumvolution was weak, 
but yet interrupted the course of the vessel, and drew it, by in- 
sensible rotations, towards the centre. She then repented her 
temerity, and with all her force endeavored to retreat ; but the 
draught of the gulf was generally too strong to be overcome, 
and the passenger, having danced in circles with a pleasing and 
giddy velocity, was at last overwhelmed and lost. Those few 
whom Reason was able to extricate generally suffered so many 
shocks upon the points which shot out from the rocks of Pleas- 
ure, that they were unable to continue their course with the 
same strength and facility as before, but floated along timorously 
and feebly, endangered by every breeze, and shattered by every 
ruffle of the water, till they sunk, by slow degrees, after long 
struggles and innumerable expedients, always repining at their 
own folly, and warning others against the first approach of the 
Gulf of Intemperance. 

There were artists who professed to repair the breaches and 
stop the leaks of the vessels which had been shattered on the 
rocks of Pleasure. Many appeared to have great confidence in 
their skill, and some, indeed, were preserved by it from sinking, 
who had received only a single blow ; but I remarked that few 
vessels lasted long which had been much repaired, nor was it 



THE RAMBLER 345 

found that the artists themselves continued afloat longer than 
those who had least of their assistance. 

The only advantage which, in the voyage of life, the cautious 
had above the negligent, was, that they sunk later, and more 
suddenly; for they passed forward till they had sometimes seen 
all those in whose company they had issued from the straits of 
infancy, perish in the way, and at last were overset by a cross 
breeze, without the toil of resistance or the anguish of expecta- 
tion. But such as had often fallen against the rocks of Pleasure 
commonly subsided by sensible degrees, contended long with 
the encroaching waters, and harassed themselves by labors that 
scarce Hope herself could flatter with success. 

As I was looking upon the various fate of the multitude 
about me, I was suddenly alarmed with an admonition from 
some unknown Power, " Gaze not idly upon others when thou 
thyself art sinking! Whence is this thoughtless tranquillity, 
when thou and they are equally endangered?" I looked, 
and, seeing the Gulf of Intemperance before me, started and 
awaked. 

No. 117. Tuesday. April 30, 1751 

Jl7j\u)f tlvoffi<pv\\ov, iV oiipavbi ajx^aros eir}. — HOMEll. 

The gods they challenge, and affect the skies: 

Heav'd on Olympus tott'ring Ossa stood; 

On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood. — Pope. 

To THE Rambler. Sir: 

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than 
the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they 
cannot comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; 
and as the student often proposes no other reward to himself 
than praise, he is easily discouraged by contempt and insult. 
He who brings with him into a clamorous multitude the tim- 
idity of recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front in 
public life, or accustomed his passions to the vicissitudes and 
accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed conversation, will 
blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and suffer himself 
to be driven by a burst of laughter from the fortresses of demon- 
stration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert, before hardy 
contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with 



346 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

a silk- worm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapid- 
ity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the 
lunar mountains. 

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had 
not sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to 
you for the means of communicating to the pubUc the theory 
of a garret; a subject which, except some slight and transient 
strictures, has been hitherto neglected by those who were best 
qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure to prosecute the 
various researches in which a nice discussion must engage them, 
or because it requires such diversity of knowledge, and such 
extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in any single intel- 
lect; or perhaps others foresaw the tumults which would be 
raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their own 
breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of 
chance. 

That the professors of literature generally reside in the high- 
est stories, has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of 
the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advan- 
tages of an elevated situation; why else were the Muses sta- 
tioned on Olympus or Parnassus by those who could with equal 
right have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected 
their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove 
himself nursed upon a mountain ? Or why did the goddesses, 
when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the 
top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great masters of 
the earlier ages endeavored to inculcate to posterity the impor- 
tance of a garret, which, though they had been long obscured 
by the negligence and ignorance of succeeding times, were 
well enforced by the celebrated symbol of Pythagoras, avefx-wv 
weovTtav t-^v t/^w TrpoaKvveL, "when the wind blows, worship its 
echo." This could not but be understood by his disciples as an 
inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found 
frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tra- 
dition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus 
evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without 
some allusion to the Pythagorean precept: — - 



Quam juvat immites ventos audire cuhantem 

A ut, gelidas hyhernus aquas cum fuderit ausler, 
Securuni somtios, imbre juvante, sequi ! 



THE RAMBLER 347 

How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, 
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs! 

And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of Lucre- 
tius, an earlier writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty 
towers of serene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise 
man looks down upon the confused and erratic state of the 
world moving below him : — 

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam muniia tetiere 
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena; 
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre 
Errare, atqiie viam palantis qiuBrere vitcB. 

'T is sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide 



To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied. 
And all the magazines of learning fortified; 
From thence to look below on human kind, 
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind. — Dryden. 

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the 
garret is still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet ; 
but this, like many ancient customs, is perpetuated only by an 
accidental imitation, without knowledge of the original reason 
for which it was estabhshed . 

Causa latet; res est notissima. 

The cause is secret, but th' effect is known. — Addison. 

Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning these 
habitations of Hterature, but without much satisfaction to the 
judicious inquirer. Some have imagined that the garret is gen- 
erally chosen by the wits as most easily rented, and concluded 
that no man rejoices in his aerial abode, but on the days of pay- 
ment. Others suspect that a garret is chiefly convenient, as it is 
remoter than any other part of the house from the outer door, 
which is often observed to be infested by visitants, who talk 
incessantly of beer, or linen, or a coat, and repeat the same 
sounds every morning, and sonieli. les again in the afternoon, 
without any variation, except that i ley grow daily more impor- 
tunate and clamorous, and raise their voices in time from 
mournful murmurs to raging vncii" orations. This eternal mo- 
notony is always detestable to a man whose chief pleasure is to 
enlarge his knowledge and var>' his ideas. Others talk of free- 



348 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

dom from noise, and abstraction from common business or 
amusements; and some, yet more visionary, tell us that the fac- 
ulties are enlarged by open prospects, and that the fancy is 
more at liberty when the eye ranges without confinement. 

These conveniences may perhaps all be found in a well- 
chosen garret; but surely they cannot be supposed sufficiently 
important to have operated un variably upon different climates, 
distant ages, and separate nations. Of an universal practice, 
there must still be presumed an universal cause, which, however 
recondite and abstruse, may be perhaps reserved to make me 
illustrious by its discovery, and you by its promulgation. 

It is universally known that the faculties of the mind are in- 
vigorated or weakened by the state of the body, and that the 
body is in a great measure regulated by the various compres- 
sions of the ambient element. The effects of the air in the pro- 
duction or cure of corporeal maladies have been acknowledged 
from the time of Hippocrates ; but no man has yet sufficiently 
considered how far it may influence the operations of the genius, 
though every day affords instances of local understanding, of 
wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to some single 
spot, and who, when they are removed to any other place, sink 
at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long 
series of observations, that invention and elocution suffer great 
impediments from dense and impure vapors, and that the 
tenuity of a defecated air, at a proper distance from the surface 
of the earth, accelerates the fancy and sets at liberty those in- 
tellectual powers which were before shackled by too strong at- 
traction, and unable to expand themselves under the pressure 
of a gross atmosphere. I have found dullness to quicken into 
sentiment in a thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils 
in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, 
have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the flaccid 
sides of a football would have swelled out into stiffness and ex- 
tension. 

For this reason I never think myself qualified to judge de- 
cisively of any man's faculties whom I have only known in one 
degree of elevation, but take some opportunity of attending 
him from the cellar to the garret, and try upon him all the vari- 
ous degrees of rarefaction and condensation, tension and laxity. 
If he is neither vivacious aloft, nor serious below, I then con- 



THE RAMBLER 349 

sider him as hopeless; but as it seldom happens that I do not 
find the temper to which the texture of his brain is fitted, I ac- 
commodate him in time with a tube of mercury, first marking 
the points most favorable to his intellects, according to rules 
which I have long studied, and which I may, perhaps, reveal to 
mankind in a complete treatise of barometrical pneumatology. 

Another cause of the gayety and sprightliness of the dwellers 
in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion 
with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of 
the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well 
known ; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehi- 
cle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer than that 
he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more space 
by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the 
ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are known to be 
fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the 
utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about 
with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer 
to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle 
with the inconveniences of his country, whenever celerity and 
acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our languor by taking 
a few turns round the centre in a garret. 

If you imagine that I ascribe to air and motion effects which 
they cannot produce, I desire you to consult your own memory, 
and consider whether you have never known a man acquire 
reputation in his garret, which, when fortune or a patron had 
placed him upon the first floor, he was unable to maintain; and 
who never recovered his former vigor of understanding, till he 
was restored to his original situation. That a garret will make 
every man a wit, I am very far from supposing; I know there 
are some who would continue blockheads even on the summit 
of the Andes, or on the peak of Teneriffe. But let not any man 
be considered as unimprovable till this potent remedy has been 
tried; for perhaps he was formed to be great only in a garret, as 
the joiner of Aretaeus was rational in no other place but his own 
shop. 

I think a frequent removal to various distances from the cen- 
tre so necessary to a just estimate of intellectual abiHties, and 
consequently of so great use in education, that, if I hoped that 
the public could be persuaded to so expensive an experiment, I 



350 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

would propose that there should be a cavern dug, and a tower 
erected, hke those which Bacon describes in Solomon's house, 
for the expansion and concentration of understanding, accord- 
ing to the exigence of different employments or constitutions. 
Perhaps some that fume away in meditations upon time and 
space in the tower, might compose tables of interest at a certain 
depth; and he that upon level ground stagnates in silence, or 
creeps in narrative, might, at the height of half a mile, ferment 
into merriment, sparkle with repartee, and froth with declama- 
tion. 

Addison observes that we may find the heat of Virgil's cUmate 
in some lines of his Georgic; so, when I read a composition, I 
immediately determine the height of the author's habitation. 
As an elaborate performance is commonly said to smell of the 
lamp, my commendation of a noble thought, a sprightly sally, 
or a bold figure, is to pronounce it fresh from the garret, — an 
expression which would break from me upon the perusal of most 
of your papers, did I not believe that you sometimes quit the 
garret, and ascend into the cockloft. Hypertatus. 

No. i6i. Tuesday, October i, 1751 

Oil} 7ap <f)vK\(i)v "yivi-q, roiride Kal dvSpwv. — HoMER. 

Frail as the leaves that quiver on the sprays, 
Like them man flourishes, like them decays. 

Mr. Rambler. Sir: 

You have formerly observed that curiosity often terminates 
in barren knowledge, and that the mind is prompted to study 
and inquiry rather by the uneasiness of ignorance than the hope 
of profit. Nothing can be of less importance to any present 
interest, than the fortune of those who have been long lost in 
the grave, and from whom nothing now can be hoped or feared. 
Yet, to rouse the zeal of a true antiquary, little more is necessary 
than to mention a name which mankind have conspired to for- 
get; he will make his way to remote scenes of action, through 
obscurity and contradiction, as Tully sought amidst bushes 
and brambles the tomb of Archimedes. 

It is not easy to discover how it concerns him that gathers 
the produce or receives the rent of an estate, to know through 
what famiUes the land has passed, who is registered in the Con- 



THE RAMBLER 351 

queror's survey as its possessor, how often it has been forfeited 
by treason, or how often sold by prodigality. The power or 
wealth of the present inhabitants of a country cannot be much 
increased by an inquiry after the names of those barbarians who 
destroyed one another, twenty centuries- ago, in contests for the 
shelter of woods or convenience of pasturage. Yet we see that 
no man can be at rest in the enjoyment of a new purchase, till 
he has learned the history of his grounds from the ancient in- 
habitants of the parish, and that no nation omits to record the 
actions of their ancestors, however bloody, savage, and rapa- 
cious. 

The same disposition, as different opportunities call it forth, 
discovers itself in great or little things. I have always thought 
it unworthy of a wise man to slumber in total inactivity, only 
because he happens to have no employment equal to his ambi- 
tion or genius. It is therefore my custom to apply my attention 
to the objects before me; and as I cannot think any place 
wholly unworthy of notice that affords a habitation to a man of 
letters, I have collected the history and antiquities of the sev- 
eral garrets in which I have resided. 

Quantulacunque estis, vos ego magna voco. 
How small to others, but how great to me! 

Many of these narratives my industry has been able to extend 
to a considerable length ; but the woman with whom I now lodge 
has lived only eighteen months in the house, and can give no 
account of its ancient revolutions, — the plasterer having at 
her entrance obKterated, by his white-wash, all the smoky me- 
morials which former tenants had left upon the ceiling, and 
perhaps drawn the veil of oblivion over politicians, philoso- 
phers, and poets. 

When I first cheapened my lodgings, the landlady told me 
that she hoped I was not an author, for the lodgers on the first 
floor had stipulated that the upper rooms should not be occu- 
pied by a noisy trade. I very readily promised to give no dis- 
turbance to her family , and soon despatched a bargain on the 
usual terms. I had not slept many nights in my new apartment 
before I began to inquire after my predecessors, and found 
my landlady, whose imagination is filled chiefly with her own 
affairs, very ready to give me information. 



352 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as 
pleasure. Before she began her narrative, I had heated my head 
with expectations of adventures and discoveries, of elegance in 
disguise, and learning in distress, and was somewhat mortified 
when I heard that the first tenant was a tailor, of whom nothing 
was remembered but that he complained of his room for want 
of light, and, after having lodged in it a month, and paid only a 
week's rent, pawned a piece of cloth which he was trusted to cut 
out, and was forced to make a precipitate retreat from this 
quarter of the town. 

The next was a young woman newly arrived from the coun- 
try, who lived for five weeks with great regularity, and became 
by frequent treats very much the favorite of the family, but at 
last received visits so frequently from a cousin in Cheapside that 
she brought the reputation of the house into danger, and was 
therefore dismissed with good advice. 

The room then stood empty for a fortnight; my landlady 
began to think she had judged hardly, and often wished for such 
another lodger. At last, an elderly man of a grave aspect read 
the bill, and bargained for the room at the very first price that 
was asked. He lived in close retirement, seldom went out till 
evening, and then returned early, sometimes cheerful and at 
other times dejected. It was remarkable that, whatever he pur- 
chased, he never had small money in his pocket; and, though 
cool and temperate on other occasions, was always vehement 
and stormy till he received his change. He paid his rent with 
great exactness, and seldom failed once a week to requite my 
landlady's civihty with a supper. At last — such is the fate of 
human felicity! — the house was alarmed at midnight by the 
constable, who demanded to search the garrets. My landlady, 
assuring him that he had mistaken the door, conducted him up 
stairs, where he found the tools of a coiner. But the tenant had 
crawled along the roof to an empty house, and escaped, — much 
to the joy of my landlady, who declares him a very honest 
man, and wonders why anybody should be hanged for making 
money, when such numbers are in want of it. She however con- 
fesses that she shall, for the future, always question the charac- 
ter of those who take her garret without beating down the price. 

The bill was then placed again in the window, and the poor 
woman was teased for seven weeks by innumerable passengers, 



THE RAMBLER 353 

who obliged her to cKmb with them every hour up five stories, 
and then disliked the prospect, hated the noise of a pubHc 
street, thought the stairs narrow, objected to a low ceiling, re- 
quired the walls to be hung with fresher paper, asked questions 
about the neighborhood, could not think of living so far from 
their acquaintance, wished the windows had looked to the 
south rather than the west, told how the door and chimney 
might have been better disposed, bid her half the price that 
she asked, or promised to give her earnest the next day, and 
came no more. 

At last, a short, meagre man, in a tarnished waistcoat, de- 
sired to see the garret, and, when he had stipulated for two long 
shelves and a larger table, hired it at a low rate. When the affair 
was completed, he looked round him with great satisfaction, 
and repeated some words which the woman did not understand. 
In two days he brought a great box of books, took possession 
of his room, and lived very inoffensively, except that he fre- 
quently disturbed the inhabitants of the next floor by unseason- 
able noises. He was generally in bed at noon, but from evening 
to midnight he sometimes talked aloud with great vehemence, 
sometimes stamped as in rage, sometimes threw down his poker, 
then clattered his chairs, then sat down in deep thought, and 
again burst out into loud vociferations ; sometimes he would 
sigh as oppressed with misery, and sometimes shake with con- 
vulsive laughter. When he encountered any of the family, he 
gave way or bowed, but rarely spoke, except that as he went up 
stairs he often repeated, — 

'Os vwipraTa Sw^ara vaiei 

(This habitant th 'aerial regions boast) ; 

— hard words, to which his neighbors listened so often that they 
learned them without understanding them. What was his em- 
ployment she did not venture to ask him, but at last heard a 
printer's boy inquire for " the author." My landlady was very 
often advised to beware of this strange man, who, though he 
was quiet for the present, might perhaps become outrageous in 
the hot months. But, as she was punctually paid, she could not 
find any sufficient reason for dismissing him, till one night he 
convinced her, by setting fire to his curtains, that it was not 
safe to have an author for her inmate. 



354 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

She had then for six weeks a succession of tenants, who left 
the house on Saturday, and, instead of paying their rent, 
stormed at their landlady. At last she took in two sisters, one 
of whom had spent her little fortune in procuring remedies for a 
lingering disease, and was now supported and attended by the 
other. She climbed with difficulty to the apartment, where she 
languished eight weeks without impatience or lamentation, 
except for the expense and fatigue which her sister suffered, and 
then calmly and contentedly expired. The sister followed her 
to the grave, paid the few debts which they had contracted, 
wiped away the tears of useless sorrow, and, returning to the 
business of common life, resigned to me the vacant habitation. 

Such, Mr. Rambler, are the changes which have happened in 
the narrow space where my present fortune has fixed my resi- 
dence. So true it is that amusement and instruction are always 
at hand for those who have skill and willingness to find them, 
and so just is the observation of Juvenal, that a single house will 
show whatever is done or suffered in the world. 
I am, sir, &c. 

PREFACE TO THE DICTIONARY 

1755 

[On the Dictionary, see Boswell's account, page 638, below. The ex- 
tract from the Preface here reprinted is the concluding portion.] 

. . . Thus have I labored, by settling the orthography, dis- 
playing the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertain- 
ing the signification of English words, to perform all the parts 
of a faithful lexicographer ; but I have not always executed my 
own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations. The work, 
whatever proofs of diligence and attention it may exhibit, is yet 
capable of many improvements : the orthography which I re- 
commend is still controvertible; the etymology which I adopt 
is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the explana- 
tions are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too 
much diffused ; the significations are distinguished rather with 
subtlety than skill, and the attention is harassed with unneces- 
sary minuteness. 
The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and per- 



PREFACE TO THE DICTIONARY 355 

haps sometimes — I hope very rarely — alleged in a mistaken 
sense; for in making this collection I trusted more to memory 
than, in a state of disquiet and embarrassment, memory can 
contain, and purposed to supply at the review what was left 
incomplete in the first transcription. 

Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though 
necessary and significant, are undoubtedly omitted; and of the 
words most studiously considered and exemplified, many senses 
have escaped observation. 

Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation 
and apology. To have attempted much is always laudable, 
even when the enterprise is above the strength that undertakes 
it; to rest below his own aim is incident to every one whose 
fancy is active, and whose views are comprehensive; nor is any 
man satisfied with himself because he has done much, but be- 
cause he can conceive Httle. When first I engaged in this work, 
I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and 
pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel 
away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern 
learning which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with 
which I expected every search into those neglected mines to re- 
ward my labor, and the triumph with which I should display 
my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus inquired into the 
original of words, I resolved to show likewise my attention to 
things; to pierce deep into every science, to inquire the nature 
of every substance of which I inserted the name, to limit every 
idea by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every production 
of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might 
be in place of all other dictionaries, whether appellative or 
technical. But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last 
to wake a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look 
for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that 
whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must 
finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, to inquire 
whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertak- 
ing without end, and, perhaps, without much improvement; for 
I did not find by my first experiments, that what I had not of 
my own was easily to be obtained : I saw that one inquiry only 
gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to 
search was riot always to find, and to find was not always to be 



356 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

informed; and that thus to pursue perfection was, Kke the first 
inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had 
reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the 
same distance from them. 

I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself , 
and no longer to solicit auxiHaries, which produced more encum- 
brance than assistance; by this I obtained at least one advan- 
tage, that I set limits to my work, which would in time be 
ended, though not completed. 

Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to 
negligence; some faults will at last appear to be the effects of 
anxious diligence and persevering activity. The nice and subtle 
ramifications of meaning were not easily avoided by a mind in- 
tent upon accuracy, and convinced of the necessity of disen- 
tangling combinations and separating similitudes. Many of the 
distinctions which to common readers appear useless and idle, 
will be found real and important by men versed in the school 
philosophy, without which no dictionary can ever be accurately 
compiled, or skillfully examined. 

Some senses, however, there are, which, though not the same, 
are yet so nearly allied that they are often confounded. Most 
men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exact- 
ness; and consequently some examples might be indifferently 
put to either signification. This uncertainty is not to be im- 
puted to me, who do not form, but register the language; who 
do not teach men how they should think, but relate how they 
have hitherto expressed their thoughts. 

The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could 
not remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable 
passages selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; 
some shining with sparks of imagination, and some replete with 
treasures of wisdom. 

The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not 
imperfect for want of care, but because care will not always be 
successful, and recollection or information come too late for use. 

That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must 
be frankly acknowledged ; but for this defect I may boldly al- 
lege that it was unavoidable ; I could not visit caverns to learn 
the miner's language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in 
the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, 



PREFACE TO THE DICTIONARY 357 

and shops of artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools, and 
operations, of which no mention is found in books. What fa- 
vorable accident or easy inquiry brought within my reach, has 
not been neglected ; but it had been a hopeless labor to glean up 
words by courting hving information, and contesting with the 
sullenness of one and the roughness of another. 

To furnish the Academicians delta Crusca with words of this 
kind, a series of comedies called La Fiera, or The Fair, was pro- 
fessedly written by Buonaroti; but I had no such assistant, and 
therefore was content to want what they must have wanted 
likewise, had they not luckily been so supphed. 

Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary to be 
lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of 
the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable ; 
many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local 
convenience, and, though current at certain times and places, 
are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is al- 
ways in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any 
part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must 
be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preserva- 
tion. 

Care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negligence. 
He that is catching opportunities which seldom occur, will 
suffer those to pass by unregarded, which he expects hourly to 
return; he that is searching for rare and remote things, will neg- 
lect those that are obvious and familiar; thus many of the most 
common and cursory words have been inserted with little illus- 
tration, because in gathering the authorities I forebore to copy 
those which I thought likely to occur whenever they were 
wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing my collection, I 
found the word sea unexemplified. 

Thus it happens that in things difficult there is danger from 
ignorance, and in things easy from confidence; the mind, afraid 
of greatness and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws her- 
self from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity 
over tasks not adequate to her powers; sometimes too secure for 
caution, and again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes 
idle in a plain path, and sometimes distracted in labyrinths, and 
dissipated by different intentions. 

A large work is difficult because it is large, even though all its 



358 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

parts might singly be performed with facility. Where there 
are many things to be done, each must be allowed its share of 
time and labor, in the proportion only which it bears to the 
whole ; nor can it be expected that the stones which form the 
dome of a temple should be squared and polished like the dia- 
mond of a ring. 

Of the event of this work, for which, having labored it with so 
much application, I cannot but have some degree of parental 
fondness, it is natural to form conjectures. Those who have 
been persuaded to think well of my design, will require that it 
should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations 
which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in 
it without opposition. With this consequence I will confess 
that I flattered myself for a while ; but now begin to fear that I 
have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience 
can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain 
time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the 
elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and 
with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who, being 
able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their 
words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dic- 
tionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption 
and decay, — that it is in his power to change sublunary na- 
ture, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affec- 
tation. 
V With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, 
to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and 
repulse intruders ; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto 
been vain. Sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints ; 
to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally theunder- 
V takings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. 
The French language has visibly changed under the inspection 
of the Academy; the style of Amelot's translation of Father 
Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be un pen passe; and no 
ItaHan will maintain that the diction of any modern writer is 
not perceptibly different from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or 
Caro. 

Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom hap- 
pen ; conquests and migrations are now very rare ; but there are 
other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation 



PREFACE TO THE DICTIONARY 359 

and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superior 
to human resistance as the revolutions of the sky or intumes- 
cence of the tide . Commerce, however necessary, however lucra- 
tive, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the language; they 
that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they 
endeavor to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a 
mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on 
the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be 
confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will 
be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and 
be at last incorporated with the current speech. 

There are hkewise internal causes equally forcible. The lan- 
guage most likely to continue long without alteration, would 
be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above bar- 
barity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in pro- 
curing the conveniences of Hfe; either without books, or, like 
some of the Mahometan countries, with very few. Men thus 
busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use 
requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same no- 
tions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected 
in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, 
where one part of the community is sustained and accommo- 
dated by the labor of the other. Those who have much leisure 
to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas; and every 
increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new 
words, or combination of words. When the mind is unchained 
from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left 
at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any 
custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with 
it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the 
same proportion as it alters practice. 

As by the cultivation of various sciences a language is am- 
plified, it will be more furnished with words deflected from their 
original sense; the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith, 
or the eccentric virtue of a wild hero, and the physician, of san- 
guine expectations and phlegmatic delays. Copiousness of 
speech will give opportunities to capricious choice, by which 
some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes 
of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the significa- 
tion of known terms. The tropes of poetry will make hourly 



36o SAMUEL JOHNSON 

encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current 
sense; pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and 
the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate 
writers will, at one time or other, by public infatuation, rise 
into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, 
will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinc- 
tion, and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expres- 
sions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the dehcate, 
others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new 
phrases are therefore adopted, which must for the same reasons 
be in time dismissed. Swift, in his petty treatise on the English 
language, allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, 
but proposes that none should be suffered to become obsolete. 
But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement 
to forbear it? And how shall it be continued, when it conveys 
an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, 
when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing 
by unfamiliarity? 

There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any 
other, which yet in the present state of the w;orld cannot be ob- 
viated. A mixture of two languages will produce a third dis- 
tinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief 
parts of education, and the most conspicuous accompKshment, is 
skill in ancient or in foreign tongues. He that has long culti- 
vated another language, will find its words and combinations 
crowd upon his memory; and haste and negligence, refinement 
and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotic ex- 
pressions. 

The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No 
book was ever turned from one language into another, without 
imparting something of its native idiom ; this is the most mis- 
chievous and comprehensive innovation. Single words may enter 
by thousands, and the fabric of the tongue continue the same; 
but new phraseology changes much at once; — it alters not 
the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. 
If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our 
style — which I, who can never wish to see dependence multi- 
plied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy — 
let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, en- 
deavor, with all their influence, to stop the license of transla- 



PREFACE TO THE DICTIONARY 361 

tors, whose idleness and ignorance, it it be suffered to proceed, 
will reduce us to babble a dialect of France. 

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains 
but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable 
distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we can- 
not repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be 
lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately de- 
feated; tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to 
degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, — let 
us make some struggles for our language. 

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature for- 
bids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labor of 
years, to the honor of my country, that we may no longer yield 
the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the 
continent. The chief glory of every people arises from its au- 
thors. Whether \ shall add anything by my own writings to 
the reputation of English literature, must be left to time. Much 
of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much 
has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in pro- 
vision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not 
think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance 
foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators 
of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my la- 
bors afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity 
to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. 

When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on 
my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with 
the spirit of a man that has endeavored well. That it will im- 
mediately become popular I have not promised to myself; a 
few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work 
of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly 
with laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt; but useful 
diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting 
some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no dic- 
tionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is 
hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some 
falling away; — that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax 
and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be suffi- 
cient; that he whose design includes whatever language can ex- 
press, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a 



362 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and 
sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger com- 
pares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvi- 
ous is not always known, and what is known is not always pre- 
sent; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, 
slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual ecHpses of 
the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in 
vain trace his memory, at the moment of need, for that which 
yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will 
come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. 

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let 
it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and though 
no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and 
the world is little solicitous to know whence proceed the faults 
of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to in- 
form it that the English Dictionary was written with little as- 
sistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; 
not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of 
academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in 
sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malig- 
nant criticism to observe that, if our language is not here fully 
displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human 
powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient 
tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, 
be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delu- 
sive ; if the aggregated knowledge and co-operating diligence of 
the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure 
of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had 
been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, 
and give their second edition another form, I may surely be 
contented without the praise of perfection, — which if I could 
obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I 
have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to 
please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage 
are empty sounds; I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquil- 
lity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. 



THE IDLER 363 



THE IDLER 

[The Idler papers, Johnson's last periodical writings, appeared on Satur- 
days, from April, 1758, to April, 1760, in Newbery's Universal Chronicle. 
Of the 103 essays all but twelve were Johnson's own.] 

No. 36. Saturday, December 23, 1758 

The great differences that disturb the peace of mankind are 
not about ends, but means. We have all the same general de- 
sires, but how those desires shall be accomplished will forever 
be disputed. The ultimate purpose of government is temporal, 
and that of religion is eternal happiness. Hitherto we agree; 
but here we must part, to try, according to the endless varieties 
of passion and understanding combined with one another, every 
possible form of government and every imaginable tenet of re- 
ligion. 

We are told by Cumberland that rectitude, applied to action 
or contemplation, is merely metaphorical, and that as a right 
line describes the shortest passage from point to point, so a 
right action effects a good design by the fewest means; and so 
likewise a right opinion is that which connects distant truths 
by the shortest train of intermediate propositions. To find 
the nearest way from truth to truth, or from purpose to effect, 
not to use more instruments where fewer will be sufficient, — 
not to move by wheels and levers what will give way to the naked 
hand, is the great proof of a healthful and vigorous mind, 
neither feeble with helpless ignorance, nor overburdened with 
unwieldy knowledge. 

But there are men who seem to think nothing so much the 
characteristic of a genius as to do common things in an uncom- 
mon manner; like Hudibras, to " tell the clock by algebra," or, 
like the lady in Dr. Young's satires, " to drink tea by strata- 
gem"; to quit the beaten track only because it is known, and 
take anew path, however crooked or rough, because the straight 
was found out before. 

Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood ; 
and it can seldom happen -but he that understands himself 
might convey his notions to another, if, content to be under- 
stood, he did not seek to be admired. But when once he begins 



364 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

to contrive how his sentiments may be received, not with most 
ease to his reader, but with most advantage to himself, he then 
transfers his consideration from words to sounds, from sen- 
tences to periods, and as he grows more elegant becomes less 
intelligible. 

It is difficult to enumerate every species of authors whose 
labors counteract themselves: the man of exuberance and 
copiousness, who diffuses every thought through so many di- 
versities of expression, that it is lost like water in a mill; the 
ponderous dictator of sentences, whose notions are delivered in 
the lump, and are, like uncoined bullion, of more weight than 
use ; the liberal illustrator, who shows by examples and com- 
parisons what was clearly seen when it was first proposed; and 
the stately son of demonstration, who proves with mathemati- 
cal formality what no man has yet pretended to doubt. 

There is a mode of style for which I know not that the masters 
of oratory have yet found a name; a style by which the most 
evident truths are so obscured that they can no longer be per- 
ceived, and the most familiar propositions so dignified that they 
cannot be known. Every other kind of eloquence is the dress of 
sense, but this is the mask by which a true master of his art will 
so effectually conceal it, that a man will as easily mistake his 
own positions, if he meets them thus transformed, as he may 
pass in a masquerade his nearest acquaintance. This style may 
be called the terrific, for its chief intention is to terrify and 
amaze. It may be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is 
to drive away the reader. Or it may be distinguished, in plain 
English, by the denomination of the bugbear style, for it has 
more terror than danger, and will appear less formidable as it is 
more nearly approached. 

A mother tells her infant that " two and two make four " ; the 
child remembers the proposition, and is able to count four to 
all the purposes of life, till the course of his education brings 
him among philosophers, who fight him from his former know- 
ledge by telling him that four is a certain aggregate of units, — 
that all numbers being only the repetition of an unit, which 
though not a number itself, is the parent, root, or original of all 
number, four is the denomination assigned to a certain number 
of such repetitions. The only danger is, lest, when he first hears 
these dreadful soundS; the pupil should run away; if he has but 



THE IDLER 365 

the courage to stay till the conclusion, he will find that, when 
speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four. 

An illustrious example of this species of eloquence may be 
found in Letters concerning Mind.^ The author begins by de- 
claring that "the sorts of things are, things that now are, have 
been, and shall be, and the things that strictly are^ In this 
position, — except the last clause, in which he uses something 
of the scholastic language, — there is nothing but what every 
man has heard and imagines himself to know. But who would 
not believe that some wonderful novelty is presented to his in- 
tellect, when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, 
that " the ares, in the former sense, are things that lie between 
the have-beens and shall-bes. The have-beens are things that are 
past; the shall-bes are things that are to come; and the things 
that are, in the latter sense, are things that have not been, nor 
shall be, nor stand in the midst of such as are before them or 
shall be after them. The things that have been and shall be 
have respect to present, past, and future. Those likewise that 
now are have, moreover, place; that, for instance, which is here, 
that which is to the East, that which is to the West." 

All this, my dear reader, is very strange; but though it be 
strange it is not new. Survey these wonderful sentences again, 
and they will be found to contain nothing more than very plain 
truths, which till this author arose had always been deHvered 
in plain language. 

No. 85. Saturday, December i, 1759 

One of the peculiarities which distinguish the present age is 
the multiplication of books. Every day brings new adver- 
tisements of literary undertakings, and we are flattered with 
repeated promises of growing wise on easier terms than our 
progenitors. 

How much either happiness or knowledge is advanced by 
this multitude of authors, it is not very easy to decide. He that 
teaches us anything which we knew not before, is undoubtedly 
to be reverenced as a master. He that conveys knowledge by 
more pleasing ways, may very properly be loved as a benefac- 
tor ; and he that supplies life with innocent amusement will be 
certainly caressed as a pleasing companion. But few of those 

1 By John Petvin (1750). 



366 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

who fill the world with books have any pretensions to the hope 
either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task 
than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a 
third, without any new materials of their own, and with very 
little application of judgment to those which former authors 
have supplied. 

That all compilations are useless I do not assert. Particles of 
science are often very widely scattered. Writers of extensive 
comprehension have incidental remarks upon topics very re- 
mote from the principal subject, which are often more valuable 
than formal treatises, and which yet are not known because they 
are not promised in the title. He that collects those under 
proper heads is very laudably employed, for, though he exerts 
no great abilities in the work, he facilitates the progress of 
others, and, by making that easy of attainment which is already 
written, may give some mind, more vigorous or more adventu- 
rous than his own, leisure for new thoughts and original designs. 

But the collections poured lately from the press have been 
seldom made at any great expense of time or inquiry, and there- 
fore only serve to distract choice without supplying any real 
want. It is observed that "a corrupt society has many laws," 
and I know not whether it is not equally true that an ignorant 
age has many books. When the treasures of ancient knowledge 
lie unexamined, and original authors are neglected and for- 
gotten, compilers and plagiaries are encouraged, who give us 
again what we had before, and grow great by setting before us 
what our own sloth had hidden from our view. 

Yet are not even these writers to be indiscriminately censured 
and rejected. Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best 
recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he 
that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning 
which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the 
literature of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new 
topics of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations 
of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself 
to the reigning taste may always have readers who perhaps 
would not have looked upon better performances. To exact of 
every man who writes that he should say something new would 
be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fer- 
tile genius to say only what is new would be to contract his vol- 



THE IDLER 367 

umes to a few pages. Yet surely there ought to be some bounds 
to repetition. Libraries ought no more to be heaped forever 
with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the 
same books differently decorated. 

The good or evil which these secondary writers produce is sel- 
dom of any long duration. As they owe their existence to change 
of fashion, they commonly disappear when a new fashion be- 
comes prevalent. The authors that in any nation last from age 
to age are few, because there are very few that have any other 
claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, 
and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary 
conveniency. 

But, however the writers of the day may despair of future 
fame, they ought at least to forbear any present mischief. 
Though they cannot arrive at eminent heights of excellence, 
they might keep themselves harmless. They might take care 
to inform themselves before they attempt to inform others, 
and exert the little influence which they have for honest pur- 
poses. But such is the present state of our literature, that the 
ancient sage who thought "a great book a great evil" would 
now think the multitude of books a multitude of evils. He would 
consider a bulky writer who engrossed a year, and a swarm of 
pamphleteers who stole each an hour, as equal wasters of human 
life, and would make no other difference between them than 
between a beast of prey and a flight of locusts. 

No. 88. Saturday, December 22, 1759 

When the philosophers of the last age were first congregated 
into the Royal Society, great expectations were raised of the 
sudden progress of useful arts; the time was supposed to be 
near, when engines should turn by a perpetual motion, and 
health be secured by the universal medicine; when learning 
should be facilitated by a real character, and commerce ex- 
tended by ships which could reach their ports in defiance of the 
tempest. 

But improvement is naturally slow. The Society met and 
parted without any visible diminution of the miseries of life. 
The gout and stone were still painful, the ground that was not 
plowed brought no harvest, and neither oranges nor grapes 
would grow upon the hawthorn. At last, those who were dis- 



368 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

appointed began to be angry; those likewise who hated innova- 
tion were glad to gain an opportunity of ridiculing men who had 
depreciated, perhaps with too much arrogance, the knowledge 
of antiquity. And it appears from some of their earliest apolo- 
gies, that the philosophers felt with great sensibility the un- 
welcome importunities of those who were daily asking, "What 
have ye done? " 

The truth is, that little had been done compared with what 
fame had been suffered to promise ; and the question could only 
be answered by general apologies and by new hopes, which, 
when they were frustrated, gave a new occasion to the same 
vexatious inquiry. 

This fatal question has disturbed the quiet of many other 
minds. He that in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires 
what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart 
such an account as will give him satisfaction. 

We do not, indeed, so often disappoint others as ourselves. 
We not only think more highly than others of our own abilities, 
but allow ourselves to form hopes which we never communicate, 
and please our thoughts with employments which none ever 
will allot us, and with elevations to which we are never expected 
to rise ; and when our days and years have passed away in com- 
mon business or common amusements, and we find at last that 
we have suffered our purposes to sleep till the time of action 
is past, we are reproached only by our own reflections. Neither 
our friends nor our enemies wonder that we live and die Hke 
the rest of mankind ; that we live without notice, and die with- 
out memorial; they know not what task we had proposed, and 
therefore cannot discern whether it is finished. 

He that compares what he has done with what he has left un- 
done, will feel the effect which must always follow the compari- 
son of imagination with reality; he will look with contempt on 
his own unimportance, and wonder to what purpose he came 
into the world ; he will repine that he shall leave behind him no 
evidence of his having been, that he has added nothing to the 
system of life, but has glided from youth to age among the 
crowd, without any effort for distinction. , 

Man is seldom willing to let fall the opinion of his own 
dignity, or to believe that he does little only because every 
individual is a very little being. He is better content to want 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 369 

diligence than power, and sooner confesses the depravity of his 
will than the imbecility of his nature. 

From this mistaken notion of human greatness it proceeds 
that many who pretend to have made great advances in wisdom 
so loudly declare that they despise themselves. If I had ever 
found any of the self-contemners much irritated or pained by 
the consciousness of their meanness, I should have given them 
consolation by observing that a little more than nothing is as 
much as can be expected from a being who, with respect to the 
multitudes about him, is himself little more than nothing. 
Every man is^bliged by the Supreme Master of the universe to 
improve all the opportunities of good which are afforded him, 
and to keep in continual activity such abilities as are bestowed 
upon him. But he has no reason to repine, though his abilities 
are small and his opportunities few. He that has improved the 
virtue, or advanced the happiness, of one fellow-creature, — he 
that has ascertained a single moral proposition, or added one 
useful experiment to natural knowledge, may be contented with 
his own performance, and, with respect to mortals like himself, 
may demand, like Augustus, to be dismissed at his departure 
with applause. 

PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 

1765 

[In 1745 Johnson published "Proposals for a New Edition of Shake- 
speare," and again (having laid aside the plan in the meantime) in 1756. 
The completed work appeared in October, 1765. The Preface includes some 
of Johnson's most eloquent prose; historically, his^ttack on the doctrine 
of the "unities" is of especial significance. The passages here reprinted 
are from the early portion, and follow the revised text of 1777, as given 
by Mr. Nichol Smith in his Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare.] 

. . . THEpoetofwhose works I have undertaken the revision 
may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the 
privilege of an established fame and prescriptive veneration. He 
has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the 
test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once de- 
rive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opin- 
ions, have for many years been lost; and every topic of merri- 
ment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life 



370 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once il- 
luminated. The effects of favor and competition are at an end ; 
the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; 
his works support no opinion with argum.ents, nor supply any 
faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor 
gratify malignity; but are read without any other reason than 
the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure 
is obtained. Yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they 
have passed through variations of taste and changes of man- 
ners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, 
have received new honors at every transmission. 

But because human judgment, though it be gradually gain- 
ing upon certainty, never becomes infallible, and approbation, 
though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of 
prejudice or fashion, it is proper to inquire by what peculiari- 
ties of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favor of 
his countr^Ttien. 

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just represen- 
tations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to 
few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are 
copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may 
delight awhile, by that novelty of which the common satiety of 
life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are 
soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability 
of truth. 

Shakespeare is, above all writers, — at least above all mod- 
ern writers, — the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his 
readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters 
are not modified by the customs of particular places, unprac- 
ticed by the rest of the world ; by the peculiarities of studies or 
professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by 
the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions : they 
are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the 
world will always supply, and observation will always find. His 
persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions 
and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole 
system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other 
poets a character is too often an individual ; in those of Shake- 
speare it is commonly a species. 

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruc- j 



^ 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 371 

tion is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare 
with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of 
Euripides that every verse was a precept ; and it may be said of 
Shakespeare that from his works may be collected a system of 
civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is^not sjiown 
in the splendor of particular passages, but by the progress of his 
fable and the tenor of his dialogue ; and he that tries to recom- 
mend him by select quotations will succeed like the pedant in 
Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick 
in his pocket as a specimen. 

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels 
in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing 
him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools 
of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, 
the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he 
found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other 
place. The same remark may be applied to every stage but that 
of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direc- 
tion, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, convers- 
ing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which 
will never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue 
of this author is often so evidently determined by the incident 
which produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and sim- 
plicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but 
to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common con- 
versation and common occurrences. 

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose 
power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quick- 
ened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the 
fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex 
them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with vio- 
lence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet 
in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with h}qper- 
bolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing 
human ever was distressed ; to deliver them as nothing human 
ever was delivered — is the business of a modern dramatist. For 
this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language 
is depraved. But love is only one of many passions; and as it 
has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation 
in the dramas of a poet who caught his ideas from the living 



372 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew 
that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a 
cause of happiness or calamity. 

Characters thus ample and general were not easily discrimi- 
nated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his person- 
ages more distinct from each other. I will not say, with Pope, 
that every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker, be- 
cause many speeches there are which have nothing characteris- 
tical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to 
every person, it will be difficult to find that any can be properly 
transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. 
The choice is right, when there is reason for choice. 

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hj'perbolical or 
aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence 
or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated 
the reader by a giant and a dwarf ; and he that should form his 
expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, 
would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no heroes; his 
scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the 
reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on 
the same occasion; even where the agency is supernatural, the 
dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most nat- 
ural passions and most frequent incidents, so that he who con- 
templates them in the book will not know them in the world. 
Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the 
wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but, 
if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has 
assigned ; and it may be said that he has not only shown human 
nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in 
trials to which it cannot be exposed. 

This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that hisdrama is 
the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in fol- 
lowing the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, 
may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human 
sentiments in human language ; by scenes from which a hermit 
may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor pre- 
dict the progress of the passions. 

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the cen- 
sure of critics who form their judgments on narrower principles. 
Dennis and Rymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman, 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 373 

and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis 
is offended ^ that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the 
buffoon ; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the 
Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare 
always makes nature predominate over accident; and, if he pre- 
serves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions 
superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or 
kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like 
every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a 
buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the sen- 
ate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined 
to show an usurper and a murderer not only odious but despic- 
able; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, 
knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine 
exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils 
of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of coun- 
try and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neg- 
lects the drapery. 

The censure which he has incurred by mixing comic and tragic c, 
scenes, as it extends to all his works, deserves more considera- 
tion. Let the fact be first stated, and then examined. 

Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous and critical sense, 
either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind, 
exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of 
good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of 
proportion and innumerable modes of combination, and express- 
ing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain 
of another; in which, at the same time, the reveler is hasting 
to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend ; in which 
the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the froKc of an- 
other, and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hin- 
dered without design. 

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the 
ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had pre- 
scribed, selected some the crimes of men, and some their ab- 
surdities ; some the momentous vicissitudes of life, and some the 
lighter occurrences; some the terrors of distress, and some the 
gayeties of prosperity. Thus rose the two modes of imitation, 
known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compositions in- 

^ See page 212, above. 



374 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

tended to promote different ends by contrary means, and con- 
sidered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the 
Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both, 

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughtexand 
sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost 
all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous charac- 
ters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes 
produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and 
laughter. 

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will 
be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from crit- 
icism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of 
poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may 
convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be de- 
nied, because it includes both in its alternations of exhibition, 
and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by 
showing how great machinations and slender designs may pro- 
mote or obviate one another, and the high and low cooperate 
in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. 

It is objected that by this change of scenes the passions are 
interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, 
being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory inci- 
dents, wants at last the power to move which constitutes the 
perfection of dramatic poetry. This reasoning is so specious 
that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience 
feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom 
fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction 
cannot move so much but that the attention may be easily 
transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melan- 
choly be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it 
be considered likewise that melancholy is often not pleasing, 
and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of an- 
other ; that different auditors have different habitudes ; and that 
upon the whole all pleasure consists in variety. 

The players who in their edition divided our author's works 
into comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have dis- 
tinguished the three kinds by any very exact or definite ideas. 
An action which ended happily to the principal persons, how- 
ever serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in 
their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy con- 






PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 375 

tinued long amongst us; and plays were written which, by 
changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day and comedies 
to-morrow. Tragedy was not, in those times, a poem of more 
general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a 
calamitous conclusion, with which the common criticism of 
that age was satisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it afforded in 
its progress. History was a series of actions, with no other than 
chronological succession, independent on each other, and with- 
out any tendency to introduce and regulate the conclusion. It is 
not always very nicely distinguished from tragedy. There is 
not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of 
Antony and Cleopatra than in the history of Richard the Second. 
But a history might be continued through many plays; as it had 
no plan, it had no limits. 

Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's 
mode of composition is the same: an interchange of seriousness 
and merriment, by which the mind is softened at one time, and 
exhilarated at another. But whatever be his purpose, whether 
to gladden or depress, or to conduct the story, without vehem- 
ence of emotion, through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, 
he never fails to attain his purpose. As he commands us, we 
laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in tran- 
quillity without indifference. 

When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the criti- 
cisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet 
is opened, without impropriety, by two sentinels; lago bellows 
at Brabantio's window without injury to the scheme of the 
play , though in terms which a modern audience would not easily 
endure; the character of Polonius is seasonable and useful, and 
the grave-diggers themselves may be heard with applause. 

Shakespeare engaged in dramatic poetry with the world open 
before him. The rules of the ancients were yet known to few; 
the pubHc judgment was unformed; he had no example of such 
fame as might force him upon imitation, nor critics of such 
authority as might restrain his extravagance. He therefore in- 
dulged his 'natural disposition; and his disposition, as R^-mer 
has remarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes, 
with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last 
with little felicity; but in his comic scenes he seems to produce, 
without labor, what no labor can improve. In tragedy he is al- 



376 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

ways struggling after some occasion to be comic ; but in comedy 
beseems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking con- 
genial to his nature. In his tragic scenes there is always some- 
thing wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or 
desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, 
and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. 
His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct. 

The force of his comic scenes has suffered little diminution 
from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or 
in words. As his personages act upon principles arising from 
genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their 
pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to 
all places; they are natural, and therefore durable. The adven- 
titious peculiarities of personal habits are only superficial dyes, 
bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim 
tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the discrimina- 
tions of true passion are the colors of nature : they pervade the 
whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits 
them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are 
dissolved by the chance which combined them, but the uniform 
simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase nor 
suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by an- 
other, but the rock always continues in its place. The stream 
of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of 
other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shake- 
speare. 

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a style 
which never becomes obsolete, — a certain mode of phraseology 
so consonant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its 
respective language, as to remain settled and unaltered, — 
this stye is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of 
life, among those who speak only to be understood, without 
ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish 
innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of 
speech in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for 
distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right. But 
there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, 
where propriety resides, and where this great poet seems to 
have gathered his comic dialogue. He is therefore more agree- 
able to the ears of the present age than any other author equally 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 377 

remote, and, among his other excellencies, deserves to be stud- 
ied as one of the original masters of our language. 

These observations are to be considered not as unexception- 
ably constant, but as containing general and predominant 
truth. Shakespeare's familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth 
and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty, as a 
country may be eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for 
cultivation. His characters are praised as natural, though their 
sentiments are sometimes forced and their actions improbable, 
as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface is 
varied with protuberances and cavities. 

Shakespeare, with his excellencies, has likewise faults, and 
faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I 
shall show them in the proportion in which they appear to me, 
without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No 
question can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's 
pretensions to renown, and little regard is due to that bigotry 
which sets candor ^ higher than truth. 

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the 
evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and 
is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems 
to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, 
a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks rea- 
sonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop 
casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or 
evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapproba- 
tion of the wicked. He carries his persons indifferently through 
right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further 
care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This 
fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate, for it is always 
a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue 
independent on time or place. 

The plots are often so loosely formed that a very slight con- 
sideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued that he 
seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He 
omits opportunities of instructing or delighting, which the train 
of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects 
those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of 
those which are more easy. 

1 That is, kindness. 



378 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

It maybe observed that in many of his plays the latter part is 
evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his 
work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labor to snatch 
the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most 
vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably pro- 
duced or imperfectly represented. 

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to 
one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, 
and opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood 
but of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavored, with more 
zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. 
We need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we 
see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the 
Gothic mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the 
only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who 
wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, 
confounded the pastoral with the feudal times ^ — the days of 
innocence, quiet, and security with those of turbulence, vio- 
lence, and adventure. 

In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he en- 
gages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and con- 
tests of sarcasm. Their jests are commonly gross, and their 
pleasantry licentious ; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have 
much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his 
clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he 
represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to de- 
termine ; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have 
been a time of stateliness, formality, and reserve, yet perhaps 
the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant. There 
must, however, have been always some modes of gayety pre- 
ferable to others, and a writer ought to choose the best. 

In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse as 
his labor is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces 
out, are for the most part striking and energetic; but whenever 
he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of 
his throes is tumor, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. 

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction 
and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident 
imperfectly, in many words, which might have been more 
plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatic poetry is natu- 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 379 

rally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs 
the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, 
and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it 
an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, en- 
deavored to recommend it by dignity and splendor. 

His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and 
weak, for his power was the power of nature. When he en- 
deavored, like other tragic writers, to catch opportunities of 
amplification, and, instead of inquiring what the occasion de- 
manded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could sup- 
ply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his 
reader. 

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an 
unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not 
reject. He struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stub- 
born, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be 
disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to 
bestow upon it. 

Not that always where the language is intricate the thought 
is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky. The 
equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial 
sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which 
they are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling 
figures. 

But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to com- 
plain when he approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and 
seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them 
with tender emotions, by the fall of greatness, the danger of 
innocence, or the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon 
ceases to do. He is not soft and pathetic without some idle con- 
ceit or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to 
move, than he counteracts himself; and terror and pity, as they 
are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden 
frigidity. 

A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapors are to the 
traveler: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him 
out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some 
malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irre- 
sistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisi- 
tion, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, 



38o SAMUEL JOHNSON 

whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining 
it in suspense, — let but a quibble spring up before him, and 
he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for 
which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from 
his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such 
delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of 
reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal 
Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it. 

It will be thought strange that, in enumerating the defects of 
this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities, 
— his violation of those laws which have been instituted and 
estabHshed by the joint authority of poets and critics. 

For his other deviations from the art of writing I resign him 
to critical justice, without making any other demand in his 
favor than that which must be indulged to all human excel- 
lence, • — that his virtues be rated with his failings. But from 
the censure which this irregularity may bring upon him, I shall, 
with due reverence to that learning which I must oppose, ad- 
venture to try how I can defend him. 

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not 
subject to any of their laws. Nothing more is necessary to all 
the praise they expect, than that the changes of action be so 
prepared as to be understood; that the incidents be various and 
affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. 
No other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. 

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of 
action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and 
regularly unraveled; he does not endeavor to hide his design 
only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, 
and Shakespeare is the poet of nature. But his plan has com- 
monly what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an 
end; one event is concatenated with another, and the conclu- 
sion follows by easy consequence. There are perhaps some inci- 
dents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk 
that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system 
makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of 
expectation. 

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard ; and 
perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand 
will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the venera- 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 381 

tion which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally 
received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to 
the poet than pleasure to the auditor. 

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises 
from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The 
critics hold it impossible that an action of months or years can 
be possibly behaved to pass in three hours; or that the spectator 
can suppose himself to sit in the theatre while ambassadors go 
and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and 
towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he 
whom they saw courting his mistress shall lament the untimely 
fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and 
fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of 
reality. 

From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the con- 
traction of place. The spectator who knows that he saw the 
first act at Alexandria cannot suppose that he sees the next at 
Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, 
in so short a time, have transported him. He knows with cer- 
tainty that he has not changed his place, and he knows that 
place cannot change itself, — that what was a house cannot 
become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis. 

Such is the triumphant language with which a critic exults 
over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly with- 
out resistance or reply. It is time, therefore, to tell him, by the 
authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes as an unquestionable 
principle a position which, while his breath is forming it into 
words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false that 
any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic 
fable in its materiality was ever credible, or for a single moment 
was ever credited. 

The objection arising from the impossibihty of passing the 
first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes that 
when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at 
Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a 
voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and 
Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He 
that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptole- 
mies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. 
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation. 



382 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

If the spectator can be once persuaded that his old acquain- 
tance are Alexander and Caesar, that a room illuminated with 
candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is 
in a state of elevation above the reach of reason or of truth, and 
from the heights of empyrean poetry may despise the circum- 
scriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind 
thus wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an 
hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brain that 
can make the stage a field. 

The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, 
and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a 
stage and that the players are only players. They come to hear 
a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant 
modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action 
must be in some place; but the different actions that complete 
a story may be in places very remote from each other; and 
where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first 
Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither 
Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre? 
"* By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended. 
The time required by the fable elapses for the most part be- 
tween the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, 
the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, 
preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be 
made in Rome, the event of the war may, without absurdity, 
be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus. 
We know that there is neither war nor preparation for war; 
we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus ; that neither 
Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits 
successive imitations of successive actions; and why may not 
the second imitation represent an action that happened years 
after the first, if it be so connected with it that nothing but 
time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of ex- 
istence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is 
as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we 
easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly 
permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation. 

It will be asked how the drama moves, if it is not credited. 
It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, 
whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as repre- 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE 383 

senting to the auditor what he would himself feel if he were to 
do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. 
The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before 
us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves 
may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy 
the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a mo- 
ment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the 
presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe when she 
remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of 
tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction ; if we thought 
murders and treasons real, they would please no more. 

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are 
mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. 
When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the 
trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains 
coolness ; but we consider how we should be pleased with such 
fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. 
We are agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet 
no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatic 
exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase 
or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful 
on the theatre than in the page ; imperial tragedy is always less. 
The humor of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but 
what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to 
the soliloquy of Cato? 

A play read affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore 
evident that the action is not supposed to be real; and it fol- 
lows that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be al- 
lowed to pass, and that no more account of space or duration 
is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of 
a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero 
or the revolutions of an empire. 

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them 
by design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I 
think, impossible to decide and useless to inquire. We may rea- 
sonably suppose that, when he rose to notice, he did not want 
the counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics, and that 
he at last deliberately persisted in a practice which he might 
have begun by chance. As nothing is essential to the fable but 
unity of. action^ and as the unities of time and place arise evi- 



384 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

den tly from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent 
of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be 
lamented that they were not known by him, or not observed; 
nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently 
reproach him that his first act passed at Venice and his next in 
Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive become the 
comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures are 
suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire. 

Non usque adeo permiscuU imis 
Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Mefelli 
Serventur leges, malint a Ccesare tolli.^ 

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatic rules, I cannot 
but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced 
against me. Before such authorities I am afraid to stand; not 
that I think the present question one of those that are to be 
decided by mere authority, but because it is to be suspected 
that these precepts have not been so easily received, but for 
better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The result of 
my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impar- 
tiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not essential to 
a just drama; that, though they may sometimes conduce to 
pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties 
of variety and instruction; and that a play written with nice 
observation of critical rules is to be contemplated as an elabo- 
rate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentatious 
art, by which is shown rather what is possible than what is 
necessary. 

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall 
preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause 
with the architect who shall display all the orders of architec- 
ture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength. But 
the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy, and 
the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature and instruct 
life. 

Perhaps what I have here not dogmatically but deliber- 
ately written, may recall the principles of the drama to a new 
examination. I am almost frighted at my own temerity ; and, 
when I estimate the fame and the strength of those that 

1 "The long day has not so confused high things with low that, if the laws were to be 
saved by Metellus, they would not prefer to be destroyed by Caesar." 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 385 

main tain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in 
reverential silence, as ^Eneas withdrew from the defense of 
Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno 
heading the besiegers. . . . 

Voltaire expresses his wonder that our author's extrava- 
gancies are endured by a nation which has seen the tragedy of 
Cato. Let him be answered that Addison speaks the language 
of poets, and Shakespeare of men. We find in Cato innumerable 
beauties which enamor us of its author, but we see nothing 
that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions. 
We place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which 
judgment propagates by conjunction with learning ; but Othello 
is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impreg- 
nated by genius. Cato aflfords a splendid exhibition of artificial 
and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, 
in diction easy, elevated, and harmonious, but its hopes and 
fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the composition 
refers us only to the writer. We pronounce the name of Cato, 
but we think on Addison. 

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accu- 
rately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades and 
scented with flowers. The composition of Shakespeare is a 
forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in 
the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and 
sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses ; filling the eye 
with awful pomp, and gratif>ing the mind with endless diver- 
sity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely 
finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. 
Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds 
in unexhauslible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, de- 
based, by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner 
minerals. . . . 

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 
1779-81 

[A number of London booksellers produced an edition of Tlie English 
Poets in cooperation, and employed Dr. Johnson to write brief biographical 
introductions. Four volumes were published in 177Q, six more in 1781. 
The "Prefaces Biographical and Critical" were separately published as 



386 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Lives of the English Poets. The poets represented were chosen by the 
booksellers, and for the minor ones the introductions were ordinarily brief, 
but in important cases they reached large proportions; and some of them 
— notably those on Dryden, Addison, and Pope — represent Johnson's 
ripest and most permanently vital criticism. That on Milton, while also 
admirable in parts, is distinguished more particularly by Johnson's Tory 
prejudices and his want of appreciation for certain aspects of poetry. The 
Lives are regularly divided into a biographical and a critical portion; the 
following extracts, with the exception of the first on Milton, represent only 
the critical portions.] 

MILTON 

. . . His theological opinions are said to have been first Cal- 
vinistical, and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the 
Presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the 
mixed questions of theology and government, he never thinks 
that he can recede far enough from popery or prelacy ; but what 
Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him : Magis hahuit 
quod Jugeret quam quod sequeretur} He had determined rather 
what to condemn than what to approve. He has not associated 
himself with any denomination of Protestants ; we know rather 
what he was not than what he was. He was not of the Church 
of Rome; he was not of the Church of England. To be of no 
church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are dis- 
tant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide 
by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reim- 
pressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and 
the salutary influence of example. Milton, who appears to have 
had full conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to have 
regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, 
to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, 
and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and 
occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any visi- 
ble worship. In the distribution of his hours there was no hour 
of prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public 
prayers, he omitted all. 

Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposi- 
tion which ought never to be made, — that men live with their 
own approbation, and justify their conduct to themselves. 
Prayer certainly was not thought superfluous by him who re- 
presents our first parents as praying acceptably in the state of 

* "He rather had something to flee than something to follow." 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 387 

innocence, and efficaciously after their fall. That he lived with- 
out prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and meditations 
were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was 
probably a fault for which he condemned himself and which he 
intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, inter- 
cepted his reformation. 

His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly 
republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better 
reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal, 
for the trappings of monarchy would set up an ordinary com- 
monwealth." It is surely very shallow policy that supposes 
money to be the chief good; and even this, without considering 
that support and expense of a court is, for the most part, only a 
particular kind of traffic, by which money is circulated with- 
out any national impoverishment. Milton's republicanism was, 
I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a 
sullen desire of independence ; in petulance impatient of control, 
and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the 
state and prelates in the church, for he hated all whom he was 
required to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant 
desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not 
so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority. 

It has been observed that they who most loudly clamor for 
liberty do not most liberally grant it. What we know of Mil- 
ton's character in domestic relations is, that he was severe and 
arbitrary. His family consisted of women, and there appears in 
his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as sub- 
ordinate and inferior beings. That his own daughters might 
not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a 
mean and penurious education. He thought women made only 
for obedience, and man only for rebellion. . . . 

Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes 
force their own judgment into false approbations of his little 
pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable 
which is only singular. All that short compositions can com- 
monly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned 
the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the 
milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a lion that 
had no skill " in dandling the kid." 



388 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

One of the poems on which much praise has. been bestowed is 
Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, 
and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must 
therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be con- 
sidered as the effusion of real passion, for passion runs not after 
remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no ber- 
ries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Min- 
cius, nor tells of rough satyrs and "fauns with cloven heel." 
Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief. In this 
poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for 
there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, — easy, 
vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply 
are long ago exhausted ; and its inherent improbability always 
forces dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Her- 
vey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much 
he must miss the companion of his labors and the partner of 
his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be excited by 
these lines? 

We drove afield, and both together heard 
What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn, 
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night. 

We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no 
flocks to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representa- 
tion may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and 
remote that it is never sought, because it cannot be known 
when it is found. 

Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen 
deities: Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and ^olus, with a long 
train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies. 
Nothing can less display knowledge, or less exercise invention, 
than to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must 
now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in 
piping ; and how one god asks another god what is become of 
Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will 
excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honor. 

This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions 
are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought 
never to be polluted with such irreverend combinations. The 
shepherd likewise is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an 
ecclesiastical pastor, a superintendent of a Christian flock. 



I 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 389 

Such equivocations are always unskillful; but here they are in- 
decent, and at least approach to impiety, — of which, however, 
I beheve the writer not to have been conscious. 

Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze 
drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man 
could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he 
not known the author. 

Of the two pieces, U Allegro and // Penseroso, I believe opinion 
is uniform ; every man that reads them reads them with pleas- 
ure. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, 
merely to show how objects derive their colors from the mind, 
by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay 
and the melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is 
differently disposed; but rather how, among the successive 
variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold on 
those by which it may be gratified. . . . 

The Sonnets were written in different parts of MUton's hfe, 
upon different occasions. They deserve not any particular criti- 
cism; for of the best it can only be said that they are not bad, 
and perhaps only the eighth and the twenty-first are truly en- 
titled to this slender commendation. The fabric of a sonnet, 
however adapted to the Italian language, has never suc- 
ceeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination, 
requires the rhymes to be often changed. 

Those little pieces may be dispatched without much anxiety; 
a greater work calls for greater care. I am now to examine 
Paradise Lost, a poem which, considered with respect to design, 
may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, 
the second, among the productions of the human mind. 

By the general consent of critics the first praise of genius is 
due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage 
of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other composi- 
tions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by call- 
ing imagination to the help of reason. Epic poetry undertakes 
to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing pre- 
cepts, and therefore relates some great event in the most affect- 
ing manner. History must supply the writer with the rudiments 
of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, 
must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospec- 
tion andanticipation. Morality must teach him the exact 



390 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

bounds and different shades of vice and virtue. From policy, 
and the practice of Ufe, he has to learn the discriminations of 
character and the tendency of the passions, either single or 
combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations 
and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is required 
an imagination capable of painting nature and reahzing fiction. 
Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of 
his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all 
the colors of words, and learned to adiust their different sounds 
to all the varieties of metrical modulation. 

Bossu is of opinion that the poet's first work is to find a 
moral, which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. 
This seems to have been the process only of Milton ; the moral 
of other poems is incidental and consequent, in Milton's only 
is it essential and intrinsic. His purpose was the most useful 
and the most arduous, " to vindicate the ways of God to man," 
— to show the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of 
obedience to the divine law. To convey this moral, there must 
be a fable, a narration artfully constructed, so as to excite curi- 
osity and surprise expectation. In this part of his work Milton 
must be confessed to have equaled every other poet. He has 
involved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which 
preceded and those that were to follow it; he has interwoven 
the whole system of theology with such propriety that every 
part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished 
shorter for the sake of quickening the progress of the main 
action. 

The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great 
importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, 
the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His 
subject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and 
earth; rebellion against the supreme King, raised by the high- 
est order of created beings; the overthrow of their host, and the 
punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reason- 
able creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their 
forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and 
peace. 

Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of 
elevated dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's 
poem, all other greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 391 

agents are the highest and noblest of human beings, the origi- 
nal parents of mankind; with whose actions the elements con- 
sented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of will, depended the 
state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all the future 
inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem, the 
chief are such as it is irreverence to name on sHght occasions. 
The rest were lower powers, — 

of which the least could wield 
Those elements, and arm him with the force 
Of all their regions; — 

powers which only the control of Omnipotence restrains from 
laying creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with 
ruin and confusion. To display the motives and actions of be- 
ings thus superior, so far as human reason can examine them, 
or human imagination represent them, is the task which this 
mighty poet has undertaken and performed. . . . 
V, The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it 
comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The 
man and woman who act and suffer are in a state which no 
other man or woman can ever know. The reader finds no trans- 
action in which he can be engaged; beholds no condition in 
which he can by any effort of imagination place himself; he has, 
therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy. We all, indeed, 
feel the effects of Adam's disobedience; we all sin Hke Adam, 
and like him must bewail our offenses; we have restless and in- 
sidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in the blessed spirits we 
have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind 
we hope to be included; and in the description of heaven 
and hell we are surely interested, as we are all to reside 
hereafter either in the regions of horror or of bliss. But these 
truths are too important to be new. They have been taught to 
our infancy ; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and 
familiar conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the 
whole texture of life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no 
unaccustomed emotion in the mind. What we knew before, we 
cannot learn; what is not unexpected cannot surprise. . . . The 
want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of 
the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets 
to take it up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its 
perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for 



392 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look else- 
where for recreation. We desert our master, and seek for com- 
panions. . . . 

The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton 
cannot be said to have contrived the structure of an epic poem, 
and therefore owes reverence to that vigor and amplitude of 
mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art of 
poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of 
incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and all the stratagems 
that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers 
from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. He was 
naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abihties, 
and disdainful of help or hindrance ; he did not refuse admission 
to the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not 
seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor 
received support. There is in his writings nothing by which the 
pride of other authors might be gratified, or favor gained; no 
exchange of praise nor solicitation of support. His great works 
were performed under discountenance, and in blindness; but 
difiiculties vanished at his touch. He was born for whatever 
is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, 
only because it is not the first. 

DRYDEN 

Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English 
criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon 
principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the 
greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through Hfe 
and nature by a genius that rarely misled and rarely deserted 
him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had 
neglected to teach them. Two Arts of English Poetry were 
written in the days of Elizabeth, by Webb and Puttenham, 
from which something might be learned, and a few hints had 
been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on 
Dramatic Poetry was the first regular and valuable treatise on 
the art of writing. 

He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of 
English literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not 
perhaps find much increase of knowledge or much novelty of 
instruction. But he is to remember that critical principles were 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 393 

then in the hands of a few, who had gathered them partly from 
the ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The 
structure of dramatic poems was not then generally under- 
stood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets perhaps 
often pleased by chance. ... To judge rightly of an author, 
we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what 
were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means 
of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult 
at another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his 
country what it wanted before; or rather he imported only the 
materials, and manufactured them by his own skill. 

The dialogue on the Drama was one of his first essays of criti- 
cism, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputa- 
tion, and therefore labored with that diligence which he might 
allow himself somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction 
to his positions, and his awe of the public was abated, partly 
by custom and partly by success. It will not be easy to find, 
in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully varie- 
gated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, 
so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with illustrations. 
His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with great 
spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as 
a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism; exact without mi- 
nuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by 
Longinus, on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by De- 
mosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a 
character so extensive in its comprehension, and so curious in 
its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or re- 
formed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all 
their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having 
diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, — of hav- 
ing changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value 
though of greater bulk. 

In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the 
criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collec- 
tion of theorems, not a rude detection of faults, which perhaps 
the censor was not able to have committed, but a gay and 
vigorous dissertation, where delight is mingled with instruc- 
tion, and where the author proves his right of judgment by his 
power of performance. ... As he had studied with great dili- 



394 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

gence the art of poetry, and enlarged or rectified his notions by 
experience perpetually increasing, he had his mind stored with 
principles and observations. He poured out his knowledge with 
little labor; for of labor, notwithstanding the multiplicity of his 
productions, there is sufficient reason to suspect that he was not 
a lover. To write con anwre, with fondness for the employment, 
with perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to 
take leave of his own idea, and an unwearied pursuit of unat- 
tainable perfection, was, I think, no part of his character. 

His criticism may be considered as general or occasional. In 
his general precepts, which depend upon the nature of things 
and the structure of the human mind, he may doubtless be 
safely recommended to the confidence of the reader; but his 
occasional and particular positions were sometimes interested, 
sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious. ... He is 
therefore by no means constant to himself. His defense and 
desertion of dramatic rhyme is generally known. Spence, in his 
remarks on Pope's Odyssey, produces what he thinks an uncon- 
querable quotation from Dryden's Preface to the Mneid, in 
favor of translating an epic poem into blank verse; but he for- 
gets that when his author attempted the Iliad, some years 
afterwards, he departed from his own decision and translated 
into rhyme. When he has any objection to obviate, or any li- 
cense to defend, he is not very scrupulous about what he asserts, 
nor very cautious, if the present purpose be served, not to en- 
tangle himself in his own sophistries. But, when all arts are 
exhausted, like other hunted animals, he sometimes stands at 
bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of one of his plays, 
he declares that he knows not any law that prescribes morality 
to a comic poet. . . . 

His literature, though not always free from ostentation, will 
be commonly found either obvious, and made his own by the 
art of dressing it; or superficial, which, by what he gives, shows 
what he wanted; or erroneous, hastily collected, and negli- 
gently scattered. Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever 
unprovided of matter, or that his fancy languishes in penury of 
ideas. His works abound with knowledge, and sparkle with 
illustrations. There is scarcely any science or faculty that does 
not supply him with occasional images and lucky similitudes; 
every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 395 

art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellec- 
tual wealth. Of him that knows much it is natural to suppose 
that he has read with diligence; yet I rather beheve that the 
knowledge of Dryden was gleaned from accidental intelligence 
and various conversation, by a quick apprehension, a judicious 
selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, 
and a powerful digestion ; by vigilance that permitted nothing 
to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered 
nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always curious, 
always active, to which every understanding was proud to be 
associated, and of which every one solicited the regard, by an 
ambitious display of himself, had a more pleasant, perhaps a 
nearer way to knowledge than by the silent progress of solitary 
reading. I do not suppose that he despised books, or intention- 
ally neglected them; but that he was carried out, by the im- 
petuosity of his genius, to more vivid and speedy instructors, 
and that his studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than 
constant and systematical. . . . 

Criticism, either didactic or defensive, occupies almost all 
his prose, except those pages which he has devoted to his pa- 
trons ; but none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. They 
have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half 
of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never bal- 
anced, nor the periods modeled; every word seems to drop by 
chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or 
languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is 
little is gay, what is great is splendid. He may be thought to 
mention himself too frequently; but, while he forces himself 
upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. 
Everything is excused b}'' the play of images and the sprightli- 
ness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble ; though 
all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though since his 
earlier works more than a century has passed, they have no- 
thing yet uncouth or obsolete. He who writes much will not 
easily escape a manner, — such a recurrence of particular 
modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always " another and 
the same"; he does not exhibit a second time the same elegan- 
cies in the same form, nor appears to have any art other than 
that of expressing with clearness what he thinks with vigor. 
His style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or ludi- 



396 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

crously; for, being always equable and always varied, it has no 
prominent or discriminative characters. The beauty who is 
totally free from disproportion of parts and features cannot be 
ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance. 

From his prose, however, Dry den derives only his accidental 
and secondary praise; the veneration with which his name is 
pronounced by every cultivator of English literature, is paid 
to him as he refined the language, improved the sentiments, 
and tuned the numbers, of English poetry. 

After about half a century of forced thoughts and rugged 
metre, some advances towards nature and harmony had been 
already made by Waller and Denham; they had shown that 
long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing when they were 
broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in the 
number but the arrangement of syllables. But though they did 
much, who can deny that they left much to do? Their works 
were not many, nor were their minds of very ample comprehen- 
sion. More examples of more modes of composition were neces- 
sary for the establishment of regularity, and the introduction of 
propriety in word and thought. 

Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself 
into diction scholastic and popular, grave and familiar, elegant 
and gross ; and from a nice distinction of these different parts 
arises a great part of the beauty of style. But, if we except a 
few minds, the favorites of nature, to whom their own original 
rectitude was in the place of rules, this dehcacy of selection was 
little known to our authors. Our speech lay before them in a 
heap of confusion, and every man took for every purpose what 
chance might offer him. There was therefore before the time of 
Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words at once refined 
from the grossness of domestic use, and free from the harsh- 
ness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words too 
familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From 
those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we 
do not easily receive strong impressions or delightful images; 
and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they 
occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should 
transmit to things. Those happy combinations of words which 
distinguish poetry from prose had been rarely attempted; we 
had few elegancies or flowers of speech. The roses had not yet 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 397 

been plucked from the bramble, or dififerent colors had not been 
joined to enliven one another. 

It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have 
overborne the prejudices which had long prevailed, and which 
even then were sheltered by the protection of Cowley. The 
new versification, as it was called, may be considered as owing 
its establishment to Dryden, from whose time it is apparent 
that EngUsh poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former 
savageness. ... 

Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known that particu- 
lar criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem politi- 
cal and controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excel- 
lences of which the subject is susceptible : acrimony of censure, 
elegance of praise, artful delineation of characters, variety and 
vigor of sentiment, happy turns of language, and pleasing har- 
mony of numbers; and all these raised to such a height as can 
scarcely be found in any other English composition. 

It is not, however, without faults. Some lines are inelegant 
or improper, and too many are irreligiously Hcentious. The 
original structure of the poem was defective; allegories drawn 
to great length will always break; Charles could not run contin- 
ually parallel with David. The subject had likewise another 
inconvenience: it admitted Httle imagery or description; and a 
long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes tedious. Though 
all the parts are forcible, and every new line kindles new rapture, 
the reader, if not reHeved by the interposition of something 
that soothes the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers 
the rest. As an approach to the historical truth was necessary, 
the action and catastrophe were not in the poet's power; there 
is therefore an unpleasing disproportion between the beginning 
and the end. We are alarmed by a faction formed out of many 
sects, various in their principles but agreeing in their purpose 
of mischief, formidable for their numbers, and strong by their 
supports; while the king's friends are few and weak. The chiefs 
on either part are set forth to view ; but when expectation is at 
the height, the king makes a speech, and — 

Henceforth a series of new times began. 

Who can forbear to think of an enchanted castle, with a wide 
moat and lofty battlements, walls of marble, and gates of brass, 



398 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

which vanishes at once into air, when the destined knight blows 
his horn before it? . . . 

His poem on the death of Mrs, Killigrew is undoubtedly the 
noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part 
flows with a torrent of enthusiasm. Fervet immensusgue ruit} 
All the stanzas, indeed, are not equal. An imperial crown can- 
not be one continued diamond ; the gems must be held together 
by some less valuable matter. 

In his first O'defor Cecilia's Day, which is lost in the splendor 
of the second, there are passages which would have dignified any 
other poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though 
the word diapason is too technical, and the rhymes are too 
remote from one another. . . . The conclusion is likewise 
striking; but it includes an image so awful in itself that it 
can owe little to poetry. . . . 

The Religio Laid, which borrows its title from the Religio 
Medici of Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which 
can be considered as a voluntary effusion. In this, therefore, it 
might be hoped that the full effulgence of his genius would be 
found. But unhappily the subject is rather argumentative 
than poetical; he intended only a specimen of metrical dispu- 
tation: — 

And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose, 
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose. 

This, however, is a composition of great excellence in its kind, 
in which the familiar is very properly diversified with the 
solemn, and the grave with the humorous ; in which metre has 
neither weakened the force nor clouded the perspicuity of argu- 
ment. Nor will it be easy to find another example equally 
happy of this middle kind of writing, which, though prosaic 
in some parts, rises to high poetry in others, and neither towers 
to the skies nor creeps along the ground. 

Of the same kind, or not far distant from it, is The Hind and 
the Panther, the longest of Dryden's original poems, — an alle- 
gory intended to comprise and to decide the controversy between 
the Romanists and Protestants. The scheme of the work is in- 
judicious and incommodious; for what can be more absurd than 
that one beast should counsel another to rest her faith upon 
a Pope and Council? He seems well enough skilled in the usual 

' "He foamsand rushes like a huge stream." (Said of Pindar by Horace.) 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 399 

topics of argument, endeavors to show the necessity of an infal- 
lible judge, and reproaches the Reformers with want of unity, 
but is weak enough to ask why, since we see without knowing 
how, we may not have an infallible judge without knowing 
where? The Hind at one time is afraid to drink at the common 
brook, because she may be worried; but, walking home with 
the Panther, talks by the way of the Nicene fathers, and at last 
declares herself to be the Catholic Church. This absurdity was 
very properly ridiculed in The City Mouse and Country Mouse of 
Montague and Prior, and in the detection and censure of the 
incongruity of the fiction chiefly consists the value of their 
performance. . . . The original incongruity runs through the 
whole ; the king is now Caesar, and now the Lion, and the name 
Pan is given to the Supreme Being. But when this constitu- 
tional absurdity is forgiven, the poem must be confessed to be 
written with great smoothness of metre, a wide extent of know- 
ledge, and an abundant multiplicity of images. The contro- 
versy is embellished with pointed sentences, diversified by 
illustrations, and enhvened by sallies of invective. Some of the 
facts to which allusions are made are now become obscure, and 
perhaps there may be many satirical passages little understood. 
As it was by its nature a work of defiance, a composition which 
would naturally be examined with the utmost acrimony of 
criticism, it was probably labored with uncommon attention; 
and there are, indeed, few neghgences in the subordinate 
parts. The original impropriety and the subsequent unpopu- 
larity of the subject, added to the ridiculousness of its first ele- 
ments, has sunk it into neglect; but it may be usefully studied 
as an example of poetical ratiocination, in which the argument 
suffers little from the metre. . . . 

His last work was his Fables, in which he gave us the first 
example of a mode of writing which the Italians call refacci- 
mento, a renovation of ancient writers by modernizing their 
language. Thus the old poem of Boiardo has been new dressed 
by Domenichi and Berni. The works of Chaucer, upon which 
this kind of rejuvenescence has been bestowed by Dryden, 
require Httle criticism. The tale of the cock seems hardly worth 
revival; and the story of Palamon and Arcite, containing an 
action unsuitable to the times in which it is placed, can hardly 
be suffered to pass without censure of the hyperbolical com- 



400 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

mendation which Dryden has given it in the general Preface 
and in a poetical Dedication, — a piece where his original fond- 
ness of remote conceits seems to have revived. Of the three 
pieces borrowed from Boccace, Sigismunda may be defended by 
the celebrity of the story. Theodore and Honoria, though it 
contains not much moral, yet afforded opportunities of strik- 
ing description. And Cymon was formerly a tale of such repu- 
tation that at the Revival of Letters it was translated into 
Latin by one of the Beroalds. 

Whatever subjects employed his pen, he was still improving 
our measures and embellishing our language. 

In this volume are interspersed some short original poems 
which, with his prologues, epilogues, and songs, may be com- 
prised in Congreve's remark that even those, if he had written 
nothing else, would have entitled him to the praise of excellence 
in his kind. One composition must, however, be distinguished. 
The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, perhaps the last effort of his 
poetry, has been always considered as exhibiting the highest 
flight of fancy and the exactest nicety of art. This is allowed to 
stand without a rival. If indeed there is any excellence beyond 
it, in some other of Dryden's works that excellence must be 
found. Compared with the ode on Killigrew, it may be pro- 
nounced perhaps superior in the whole, but without any single 
part equal to the first stanza of the other. It is said to have cost 
Dryden a fortnight's labor; but it does not want its negligences. 
Some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes, — a de- 
fect which I never detected but after an acquaintance of many 
years, and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder 
him from perceiving. His last stanza has less emotion than the 
former, but it is not less elegant in the diction. The conclusion 
is vicious; the music of Timotheus, which "raised a mortal to 
the skies," had only a metaphorical power; that of Cecilia, 
which "drew an angel down," had a real effect; the crown 
therefore could not reasonably be divided. 

In a general survey of Dryden's labors, he appears to have a 
mind very comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with 
acquired knowledge. His compositions are the effects of a vig- 
orous genius operating upon large materials. The power that 
predominated in his intellectual operations was rather strong 
reason than quick sensibility. Upon all occasions that were 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 401 

presented, he studied rather than felt, and produced sentiments 
not such as Nature enforces, but meditation suppHes. With the 
simple and elemental passions, as they spring separate in the 
mind, he seems not much acquainted, and seldom describes 
them but as they are complicated by the various relations of 
society, and confused in the tumults and agitations of life. 

What he says of Love may contribute to the explanation of 
his character: — 

Love various minds does variously inspire; 

It stirs in gentle bosoms gentle fire, 

Like that of incense on the altar laid; 

But raging flames tempestuous souls invade; — 

A fire which every windy passion blows, 

With pride it mounts, or with revenge it glows. 

Dryden's was not one of the "gentle bosoms." Love, as it sub- 
sists in itself, with no tendency but to the person loved, and 
wishing only for correspondent kindness, — such love as shuts 
out all other interest, the love of the Golden Age, — was too 
soft and subtle to put his faculties in motion. He hardly con- 
ceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with some other 
desires — when it was inflamed by rivalry, or obstructed by 
difiiculties; when it invigorated ambition, or exasperated 
revenge. He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not 
often pathetic, and had so little sensibility of the power of 
effusions purely natural, that he did not esteem them in others. 
Simplicity gave him no pleasure; and for the first part of his 
life he looked on Otway with contempt, though at last, indeed 
very late, he confessed that in his play there was "Nature, 
which is the chief beauty," 

We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain 
whether it was not rather the difficulty which he found in 
exhibiting the genuine operations of the heart, than a servile 
submission to an injudicious audience, that filled his plays 
with false magnificence. It was necessary to fix attention; and 
the mind can be captivated only by recollection or by curios- 
ity, — by reviving natural sentiments, or impressing new ap- 
pearances of things. Sentences were readier at his call than 
images; he could more easily fill the ear with some splendid 
novelty, than awaken those ideas that slumber in the heart. . . . 

Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope that he "could select 



402 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any 
other English writer could supply." Perhaps no nation ever 
produced a writer that enriched his language with such variety 
of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the 
completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and 
much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we were 
taught sapere etfari, — to think naturally and express forcibly. 
Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be 
perhaps maintained that he was the first who joined argument 
with poetry. He showed us the true bounds of a translator's 
liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may 
be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished 
by Dryden: Lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit. He found it 
brick, and he left it marble. 

ADDISON 

. . . Addison is now to be considered as a critic, — a name 
which the present generation is scarcely wilhng to allow him. 
His criticism is condemned as tentative or experimental, rather 
than scientific, and he is considered as deciding by taste rather 
than by principles. 

. It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the 
labor of others to add a little of their own, and overlook their 
masters. Addison is now despised by some who perhaps would 
never have seen his defects but by the lights which he afforded 
them. That he always wrote as he would think it necessary to 
write now, cannot be affirmed ; his instructions were such as the 
characters of his readers made proper. That general knowledge 
which now circulates in common talk, was in his time rarely to 
be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of 
ignorance; and in the female world any acquaintance with 
books was distinguished only to be censured. His purpose was 
to infuse literary curiosity by gentle and unsuspected convey- 
ance, into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy. He therefore pre- 
sented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and 
austere, but accessible and familiar. When he showed them 
their defects, he showed them likewise that they might be easily 
supplied. His attempt succeeded; inquiry was awakened and 
comprehension expanded. An emulation of intellectual ele- 
gance was excited, and from this time to our own life has been 
gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged. , ■ 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 403 

Dryden had, not many years before, scattered criticism over 
his prefaces with very little parsimony; but, though he some- 
times condescended to be somewhat famihar, his manner was 
in general too scholastic for those who had yet their rudiments 
to learn, and found it not easy to understand their master. 
His observations were framed rather for those that were learn- 
ing to write than for those that read only to talk. An instructor 
like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks, being superficial, 
might be easily understood, and, being just, might prepare the 
mind for more attainments. Had he presented Paradise Lost to 
the public with all the pomp of system and severity of science, 
the criticism would perhaps have been admired, and the poem 
still have been neglected. But by the blandishments of gen- 
tleness and facihty he has made Milton an universal favorite, 
with whom readers of every class think it necessary to be 
pleased. 

He descended now and then to lower disquisitions, and by a 
serious display of the beauties of Chevy Chase^ ex])osed himself 
to the ridicule of WagstafI, who bestowed a like pompous char- 
acter on Tom Thumb, and to the contempt of Dennis, who, 
considering the fundamental position of his criticism, that 
Chevy Chase pleases, and ought to please, because it is natural, 
observes "that there is a way of deviating from nature by 
bombast or tumor, which soars above nature, and enlarges 
image§ beyond their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes 
nature in quest of something unsuitable; and by imbecihty, 
which degrades nature by faintness and diminution, by obscur- 
ing its appearances and weakening its effects." In Chevy Chase 
there is not much of either bombast or affectation, but there is 
ch.>li and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be told 
in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind. 

Before the profound observers of the present race repose too 
securely on the consciousness of their superiority to Addison, 
let them consider his Remarks on Ovid, in which may be found 
specimens of criticism sufficiently subtle and refined; let them 
peruse lik< wise hi > essays on Wit, and on the Pleasures of 
Im.agination, in which he founds art on the base of nature, and 
draws the principles of invention from dispositions inherent in 
th< mind of man, with skill and elegance such as his contemners 
wi' not easily obtain. 

• See page 184, above. 



404 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

As a describer of life and manners, he must be allowed to 
stand perhaps the first of the first rank. His humor, which, as 
Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as 
to give the grace of novelty to domestic scenes and daily oc- 
currences. He never "outsteps the modesty of nature," nor 
raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His 
figures neither divert by distortion nor amaze by aggravation. 
He copies life with so much fidelity that he can be hardly said 
to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that 
it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagi- 
nation. 

As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His 
religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious; he ap- 
pears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly skeptical; his 
morality is neither dangerously lax nor impracticably rigid. All 
the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are 
employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care 
of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shown sometimes 
as the phantom of a vision, sometimes appears half veiled in an 
allegory, sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy, and 
sometimes steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a 
thousand dresses, and in all is pleasing, 

Mille habet ornatus, mille decenler hahet. 

His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects 
not formal, on light occasions not groveling; pure without 
scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always 
equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed 
sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch 
a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazard- 
ous innovations. His page is always lumhious, but never I )lazes 
in unexpected splendor. It was apparer'ly his principal en- 
deavor to avoid all harshness and sever' ty of diction; he is 
therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and conneciions, 
and sometimes descends too much to the l.Miguage of conversa- 
tion. Yet if his language had been less idiomatical, it might 
have lost somewhat of its genuine anglicism. What he at- 
tempted,, he performed. He is never feeble, and he did not 
wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. 
His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor affected 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 405 

brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are volu- 
able and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style 
familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, 
must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. 

POPE 

. . . Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were 
not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The 
rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dis- 
mission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural 
thoughts and rugged mmibers. But Dryden never desired to 
apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed 
to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others he 
contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent 
powers; he never attempted to make that better which was 
already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to 
be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little considera- 
tion. When occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured 
out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when 
once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for when 
he had no pecuniary interest he had no further solicitude. 

Pope was not content to satisfy. He desired to excel, and 
therefore always endeavored to do his best. He did not court 
the candor, but dared the judgment, of his reader; and, expect- 
ing no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He 
examined lines and words with minute and punctilious obser- 
vation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, 
till he had left nothing to be forgiven. For this reason he kept 
his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and re- 
considered them. The only poems which can be supposed to 
have been written with such regard to the times as might 
hasten their publication, were the two satires of Thirty-eight, 
of which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him 
by the author that they might be fairly copied. '' Almost every 
line," he said, " was then written twice over. I gave him a clean 
transcript, which he sent some time afterwards to me for the 
press, with almost every line written twice over a second time." 

His declaration that his care for his works ceased at their 
publication was not strictly true. His parental attention 
never abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edi- 



4o6 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

tion, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears 
to have revised the Iliad, and freed it from some of its imper- 
fections; and the Essay on Criticism received many improve- 
ments after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that 
he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigor. Pope 
had perhaps the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly 
wanted the diligence of Pope. 

In acquired knowledge the superiority must be allowed to 
Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before 
he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, 
with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, 
and he collects his images and illustrations from a more exten- 
sive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his 
general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of 
Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those 
of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the 
knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. 

Poetry was not the sole praise of either, for both excelled 
likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his 
predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that 
of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden observes the motions 
of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of 
composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope 
is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a 
natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the 
varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet 
lawn, shaven by the scythe and leveled by the roller. 

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality 
without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert, that 
energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, — the 
superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. 
It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigor Pope had only 
a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since 
Milton must give place to Pope, and even of Dryden it must be 
said that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better 
poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either 
excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic 
necessity; he composed without consideration and published 
without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or 
gather in one excursion, was all that he sought and all that he 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 407 

gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense 
his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all 
that study might produce or chance might supply. If the 
flights of Drydenare higher, Pope continues longeron the wing. 
If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is 
more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expecta- 
tion, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with fre- 
quent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. 

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found 
just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, 
of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not 
too hastily condemn me, for meditation and inquiry may per- 
haps show him the reasonableness of my determination .... 

The Essay on Man was a work of great labor and long consid- 
eration, but certainly not the happiest of Pope's performances, 
The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry, and the poet 
was not sufiiciently master of his subject. Metaphysical mo- 
rahty was to him a new study; he was proud of his acquisitions, 
and, supposing himself master of great secrets, was in haste 
to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the first 
Epistle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may be de- 
duced an order of beings such as mankind, because Infinite 
Excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these 
beings must be "somewhere," and that "all the question is, 
whether man be in a wrong place." Surely if, according to 
the poet's Leibnitian reasoning, we may infer that man ought 
to be, only because he is, we may allow that his place is the 
right place because he has it. Supreme Wisdom is not less 
infallible in disposing than in creation. But what is meant by 
"somewhere" and "place "and "wrong place," it had been 
vain to ask Pope, who probably had never asked himself. 

Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us 
much that every man knows, and much that he does not know 
himself: that we see but little, and that the order of the uni- 
verse is beyond our comprehension, — an opinion not very 
uncommon; and that there is a chain of subordinate beings 
"from infinite to nothing," — of which himself and his readers 
are equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which with- 
out his help he supposes unattainable, in the position that 
"though we are fools, yet God is wise." 



4o8 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

This Essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance 
of genius, the dazzling splendor of imagery, and the seductive 
powers of eloquence. Never was penury of knowledge and vul- 
garity of sentiment so happily disguised. The reader feels his 
mind full, though he learns nothing; and, when he meets it in 
its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his 
nurse. When these wonder-working sounds sink into sense, and 
the doctrine of the Essay, disrobed of its ornaments, is left to 
the powers of its naked excellence, what shall we discover? 
That we are, in comparison with our Creator, very weak and 
ignorant; that we do not uphold the chain of existence; and 
that we could not make one another with more skill than we are 
made. We may learn yet more: that the arts of human life 
were copied from the instinctive operations of other animals; 
that, if the world be made for man, it may be said that man 
was made for geese. To these profound principles of natural 
knowledge are added some moral instructions equally new: 
that self-interest, well understood, will produce social concord; 
that men are mutual gainers by mutual benefits; that evil is 
sometimes balanced by good; that human advantages are 
unstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration and doubtful 
effect; that our true honor is, not to have a great part, but to 
act it well; that virtue only is our own; and that happiness is 
always in our power. Surely a man of no very comprehensive 
search may venture to say that he has heard all this before. 
But it was never till now recommended by such a blaze of 
embellishment, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous 
contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of 
others, the incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, 
sometimes the softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, sus- 
pend criticism, and oppress judgment by overpowering plea- 
sure. This is true of many paragraphs; yet if I had undertaken 
to exemplify Pope's felicity of composition before a rigid critic, 
I should not select the Essay on Man; for it contains more 
lines unsuccessfully labored, more harshness of diction, more 
thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, 
and more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found 
in all his other works. ... 

After all this, it is surely superfluous to answer the question 
that has once been asked, whether Pope was a poet, otherwise 



LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS 409 

than by asking in return: If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry 
to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only 
show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which 
shall exclude Pope will not easily be made. Let us look round 
upon the present time, and back upon the past; let us inquire 
to whom the voice of mankind has decreed the wreath of 
poetry; let their productions be examined, and their claims 
stated, and the pretensions of Pope will be no more disputed. 
Had he given the world only his version, the name of poet must 
have been allowed him ; if the writer of the Iliad were to class 
his successors, he would assign a very high place to his trans- 
lator, without requiring any other evidence of genius. 



DAVID HUME 
ESSAY ON THE STANDARD OF TASTE 

1757 

[This essay was first published in a volume called Four Dissertations, the 
others being on "The Natural History of Religion," "The Passions," and 
"Tragedy." In the following year (1758) it reappeared in the volume 
called Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Its subject-matter may be 
compared with Addison's essay on Taste in the Spectator, No. 409 (see 
page 204, above.)] 

The great variety of taste, as well as of opinion, which pre- 
vails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under every 
one's observation. Men of the most confined knowledge are 
able to remark a difference of taste in the narrow circle of their 
acquaintance, even where the persons have been educated 
under the same government and have early imbibed the same 
prejudices. But those who can enlarge their view to contem- 
plate distant nations and remote ages, are still more surprised 
at the great inconsistence and contrariety. We are apt to call 
barbarous whatever departs widely from our own taste and 
apprehension, but soon find the epithet of reproach retorted on 
us. And the highest arrogance and self-conceit is at last start- 
led, on observing an equal assurance on all sides, and scruples, 
amidst such a contest of sentiment, to pronounce positively in 
its own favor. 

As this variety of taste is obvious to the most careless in- 
quirer, so will it be found, on examination, to be still greater in 
reality than in appearance. The sentiments of men often differ 
with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while 
their general discourse is the same. There are certain terms 
in every language which import blame, and others praise; and 
all men who use the same tongue must agree in their application 
of them. Every voice is united in applauding elegance, pro- 
priety, simplicity, spirit in writing, and in blaming fustian, 
affectation, coldness, and a false brilliancy. But when critics 
come to particulars, this seeming unanimity vanishes, and it is 



THE STANDARD OF TASTE 411 

found that they had affixed a very different meaning to their 
expressions. In all matters of opinion and science, the case is 
opposite ; the difference among men is there of tener found to lie 
in generals than in particulars, and to be less in reality than in 
appearance. An explanation of the terms commonly ends the 
controversy, and the disputants are surprised to find that they 
had been quarrehng while at bottom they agreed in their 
judgment. ..." 

It is natural for us to seek a standard of taste; a rule by which 
the various sentiments of men may be reconciled ; at least a de- 
cision afforded, confirming one sentiment and condemning 
another. 

There is a species of philosophy which cuts off all hopes of 
success in such an attempt, and represents the impossibility 
of ever attaining any standard of taste. The difference, it is 
said, is very wide between judgment and sentiment. All senti- 
ment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing 
beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious 
of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right, 
because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, 
— to wit, real matter of fact, and are not always conformable 
to that standard. Among a thousand different opinions which 
different men may entertain of the same subject, there is one, 
and but one, that is just and true, and the only difficulty is to 
fix and ascertain it. On the contrary, a thousand different sen- 
timents, excited by the same object, are all right, because no 
sentiment represents what is really in the object. It only marks 
a certain conformity or relation between the object and the or- 
gans or faculties of the mind; and if that conformity did not 
really exist, the sentiment could never possibly have being. 
Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in 
the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives 
a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, 
where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought 
to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regu- 
late those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, 
is as fruitless an inquiry as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet 
or real bitter. According to the disposition of the organs, the 
same object may be both sweet and bitter, and the proverb 
has justly determined it to be fruitless to dispute concerning 



412 DAVID HUME 

tastes. It is very natural, and even quite necessary, to extend 
this axiom to mental as well as bodily taste ; and thus common 
sense, which is so often at variance with philosophy, especially 
with the skeptical kind, is found in one instance at least to agree 
in pronouncing the same decision. 

But though this axiom, by passing into a proverb, seems to 
have attained the sanction of common sense, there is certainly 
a species of common sense which opposes it, at least serves to 
modify and restrain it. Whoever would assert an equahty of 
genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and 
Addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance 
than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe, 
or a pond as extensive as the ocean. Though there may be 
found persons who give the preference to the former authors, no 
one pays attention to such a taste, and we pronounce without 
scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd 
and ridiculous. The principle of the natural equality of tastes 
is then totally forgot, and while we admit it on some occasions, 
where the objects seem near an equality, it appears an extrava- 
gant paradox, or rather a palpable absurdity, where objects so 
disproportioned are compared together. 

It is evident that none of the rules of composition are fixed 
by reasonings a priori, or can be esteemed abstract conclusions 
of the understanding, from comparing those habitudes and 
relations of ideas which are eternal and immutable. Their 
foundation is the same with that of all the practical sciences, 
experience; nor are they anything but general observations con- 
cerning what has been universally found to please in all coun- 
tries and in all ages. Many of the beauties of poetry and even 
of eloquence are founded on falsehood and fiction, on hyper- 
boles, metaphors, and an abuse or perversion of terms from 
their natural meaning. To check the sallies of the imagination, 
and to reduce every expression to geometrical truth and exact- 
ness, would be the most contrary to the laws of criticism, be- 
cause it would produce a work which, by universal experience, 
has been found the most insipid and disagreeable. But though 
poetry can never submit to exact truth, it must be confined by 
rules of art, discovered to the author either by genius or obser- 
vation. If some negligent or irregular writers have pleased, 
they have not pleased by their transgressions of rule or order, 



THE STANDARD OF TASTE 413 

but in spite of these transgressions. They have possessed other 
beauties, which were conformable to just criticism, and the 
force of these beauties has been able to overpower censure, and 
give the mind a satisfaction superior to the disgust arising 
from the blemishes. Ariosto pleases, but not by his monstrous 
and improbable fictions, by his bizarre mixture of the serious 
and comic styles, by the want of coherence in his stories, or by 
the continual interruptions of his narration. He charms by the 
force and clearness of his expression, by the readiness and 
variety of his inventions, and by his natural pictures of the pas- 
sions, especially those of the gay and amorous kind ; and how- 
ever his faults may diminish our satisfaction, they are not able 
entirely to destroy it. Did our pleasure really arise from those 
parts of his poem which we denominate faults, this would be 
no objection to criticism in general; it would only be an objec- 
tion to those particular rules of criticism which would establish 
such circumstances to be faults, and would represent them as 
universally blamable. If they are found to please, they cannot 
be faults, let the pleasure which they produce be ever so unex- 
pected and unaccountable. . . . 

The same Homer who pleased at Athens and Rome two thou- 
sand years ago, is still admired at Paris and at London. All the 
changes of climate, government, religion, and language have 
not been able to obscure his glory. Authority or prejudice may 
give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or orator, but his reputa- 
tion will never be durable or general. When his compositions 
are examined by posterity or by foreigners, the enchantment 
is dissipated, and his faults appear in their true colors. On the 
contrary, a real genius, the longer his works endure, and the 
more wide they are spread, the more sincere is the admiration 
which he meets with. Envy and jealousy have too much place 
in a narrow circle, and even familiar acquaintance with his 
person may diminish the applause due to his performances; but 
when these obstructions are removed, the beauties, which are 
naturally fitted to excite agreeable sentiments, immediately 
display their energy, and while the world endures they main- 
tain their authority over the minds of men. 

It appears, then, that, amidst all the variety and caprice of 
taste, there are certain general principles of approbation or 
blame, whose influence a careful eye may trace in all operations 



414 DAVID HUME 

of the mind. Some particular forms or qualities, from the 
original structure of the internal fabric, are calculated to 
please, and others to displease; and if they fail of their effect in 
any particular instance, it is from some apparent defect or im- 
perfection in the organ. A man in a fever would not insist on 
his palate as able to decide concerning flavors, nor would one 
affected with the jaundice pretend to give a verdict with regard 
to colors. In each creature there is a sound and a defective 
state, and the former alone can be supposed to afford us a true 
standard of taste and sentiment. If, in the sound state of the 
organ, there be an entire or a considerable uniformity of senti- 
ment among men, we may thence derive an idea of the perfect 
beauty; in like manner as the appearance of objects in day- 
light, to the eye of a man in health, is denominated their true 
and real color, even while color is allowed to be merely a phan- 
tasm of the senses. 

Many and frequent are the defects in the internal organs, 
which prevent or weaken the influence of those general princi- 
ples on which depends our sentiment of beauty or deformity. 
Though some objects, by the structure of the mind, be natur- 
ally calculated to give us pleasure, it is not to be expected that 
in every individual the pleasure will be equally felt. Particular 
incidents and situations occur, which either throw a false light 
on the objects or hinder the true from conveying to the imagin- 
ation the proper sentiment and perception. 

One obvious cause why many feel not the proper sentiment 
of beauty, is the want of that delicacy of imagination which is 
requisite to convey a sensibihty of those finer emotions. This 
delicacy every one pretends to; everyone talks of it; and would 
reduce every kind of taste or sentiment to its standard. But as 
our intention in this essay is to mingle some Hght of the under- 
standing with the feelings of sentiment, it will be proper to give 
a more accurate definition of dehcacy than has hitherto been 
attempted. And not to draw our philosophy from too profound 
a source, we shall have recourse to a noted story in Don Quixote. 

"It is with good reason," says Sancho to the squire with the 
great nose, " that I pretend to have a judgment in wine: this is 
a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my kinsmen were 
once called to give their opinion of a hogshead which was sup- 
posed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of 



THE STANDARD OF TASTE 



415 



them tastes it, — considers it, and, after mature reflection, pro- 
nounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of 
leather which he perceived in it. The other, after using the 
same precautions, gives also his verdict in favor of the wine, 
but with the reserve of a taste of iron which he could easily dis- 
tinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridi- 
culed for their judgment. But who laughed in the end? On 
emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom an old 
key with a leathern thong tied to it." 

The great resemblance between mental and bodily taste will 
easily teach us to apply this story. Though it be certain that 
beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not 
quaHties in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, in- 
ternal or .external, it must be allowed that there are certain 
qualities in objects which are fitted by nature to produce those 
particular feehngs. Now as these qualities may be found in a 
small degree, or may be mixed and confounded with each other, 
it often happens that the taste is not affected with such minute 
qualities, or is not able to distinguish all the particular flavors, 
amidst the disorder in which they are presented. Where the 
organs are so fine as to allow nothing to escape them, and at the 
same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the com- 
position, this we call delicacy of taste, whether we employ these 
terms in the literal or metaphorical sense. Here then the gen- 
eral rules of beauty are of use, being drawn from established 
models, and from the observation of what pleases or displeases, 
when presented singly and in a high degree. And if the same 
quaHties, in a continued composition and in a smaller degree, 
affect not the organs with a sensible delight or uneasiness, we 
exclude the person from all pretensions to this delicacy. To 
produce these general rules or avowed patterns of composition 
is like finding the key with the leathern thong, which justified 
the verdict of Sancho's kinsmen, and confounded those pre- 
tended judges who had condemned them. Though the hogs- 
head had never been emptied, the taste of the one was still 
equally delicate, and that of the other equally dull and languid; 
but it would have been more difficult to have proved the superi- 
ority of the former, to the conviction of every bystander. In 
like manner, though the beauties of writing had never been 
m.ethodized or reduced to general principles, though no excel- 



416 DAVID HUME 

lent models had ever been acknowledged, the different degrees 
of taste would still have subsisted, and the judgment of one 
man been preferable to that of another; but it would not have 
been so easy to silence the bad critic, who might always insist 
upon his particular sentiment, and refuse to submit to his an- 
tagonist. But when we show him an avowed principle of art; 
when we illustrate this principle by examples whose operation, 
from his own particular taste, he acknowledges to be conform- 
able to the principle; when we prove that the same principle 
may be applied to the present case, where he did not perceive 
or feel its influence, — he must conclude, upon the whole, that 
the fault lies in himself, and that he wants the delicacy which 
is requisite to make him sensible of every beauty and every 
blemish in any composition or discourse. 

It is acknowledged to be the perfection of every sense or 
faculty, to perceive with exactness its most minute objects, 
and allow nothing to escape its notice and observation. The 
smaller the objects are which become sensible to the eye, the 
finer is that organ and the more elaborate its make and com- 
position. A good palate is not tried by strong flavors, but by 
a mixture of small ingredients, where we are still sensible of 
each part, notwithstanding its minuteness and its confusion 
with the rest. In like manner, a quick and acute perception of 
beauty and deformity must be the perfection of our mental 
taste; nor can a man be satisfied with himself while he suspects 
that any excellence or blemish in a discourse has passed him 
unobserved. In this case the perfection of the man, and the 
perfection of the sense or feeling, are found to be united. A 
very delicate palate, on many occasions, may be a great incon- 
venience both to a man himself and to his friends. But a deli- 
cate taste of wit or beauty must always be a desirable quality, 
because it is the source of all the finest and most innocent 
enjoyments of which human nature is susceptible. In this 
decision the sentiments of all mankind are agreed. Wherever 
you can ascertain a delicacy of taste, it is sure to meet with 
approbation ; and the best way of ascertaining it is to appeal to 
those models and principles which have been established by the 
uniform consent and experience of nations and ages. . . . 

Though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly, if not 
entirely, the same in all men, yet few are qualified to give judg- 



MY OWN LIFE 417 

ment on any work of art, or establish their own sentiment as 
the standard of beauty. The organs of internal sensation are 
seldom so perfect as to allow the general principles their full 
play, and produce a feeling correspondent to those principles. 
They either labor under some defect, or are vitiated by some 
disorder; and by that means excite a sentiment which may be 
pronounced erroneous. When the critic has no delicacy, he 
judges without any distinction, and is only affected by the 
grosser and more palpable qualities of the object; the finer 
touches pass unnoticed and disregarded. Where he is not aided 
by practice, his verdict is attended with confusion and hesita- 
tion. Where no comparison has been employed, the most 
frivolous beauties, such as rather merit the name of defects, 
are the object of his admiration. Where he lies under the influ- 
ence of prejudice, all his natural sentiments are perverted. 
Where good sense is wanting, he is not qualified to discern the 
beauties of design and reasoning, which are the highest and 
most excellent. Under some or other of these imperfections 
the generality of men labor, and hence a true judge in the finer 
arts is observed, even during the most polished ages, to be so 
rare a character. Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, 
improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of 
all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable charac- 
ter; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be 
found, is the true standard of taste and beauty. . . . 



MY OWN LIFE 
1777 

[The autobiographical sketch here represented was dated April 18, 1776, 
some four months before Hume's death, and was pubhshed the following 
year as a pamphlet called The Life of David Hume, Esq.; written by himself. 
In a codicil to his will Hume desired that it might be prefixed to his col- 
lected works.] 

... I HAD always entertained a notion that my want of 
success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature had pro- 
ceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had 
been guilty of a very usual indiscretion in going to the press 
too early. I therefore cast the first part of that work anew in 



4i8 DAVID HUME 

the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was pub- 
lished while I was at Turin. But this piece was at first little 
more successful than the Treatise of Human Nature. On my 
return from Italy I had the mortification to find all England in 
a ferment on account of Dr. Middleton's Free Inquiry, while 
my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected. A new 
edition, which had been published at London, of my Essays, 
Moral and Political, met not with a much better reception. 

Such is the force of natural temper that these disappoint- 
ments made little or no impression on me. I went down in 
1749, and lived two years with my brother at his country house, 
for my mother was now dead. I there composed the second 
part of my Essays, which I called Political Discourses, and also 
my Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which is an- 
other part of my treatise that I cast anew. Meanwhile my 
bookseller, A. Millar, informed me that my former publications 
(all but the unfortunate Treatise) were beginning to be the sub- 
ject of conversation, that the sale of them was gradually in- 
creasing, and that new editions were demanded. Answers by 
Reverends and Right Reverends came out two or three in a 
year, and I found, by Dr. Warburton's railing, that the books 
were beginning to be esteemed in good company. However, I 
had fixed a resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to 
reply to anybody; and not being very irascible in my temper, I 
have easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. These 
symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I 
was ever more disposed to see the favorable than unfavorable 
side of things, — a turn of mind which it is more happy to pos- 
sess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year. . . . 

In 1752 the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, 
an office from which I received little or no emolument, but 
which gave me the command of a large library, I then formed 
the plan of writing the History of England ; but being frightened 
with the notion of continuing a narrative through a period of 
1700 years, I commenced with the accession of the House of 
Stuart, an epoch when, I thought, the misrepresentations of fac- 
tion began chiefly to take place. I was, I own, sanguine in my 
expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was 
the only historian that had at once neglected present power, 
interest; and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and 



MY OWN LIFE 419 

as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected propor- 
tional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was 
assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detes- 
tation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman 
and sectary, free-thinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, 
united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed 
a generous tear for the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Straf- 
ford ; and after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what 
was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into obliv- 
ion. Mr. Millar told me that in a twelvemonth he sold only 
forty-five copies of it. . . . 

In 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was pub- 
lished the second volume of my History, containing the period 
from the death of Charles I till the Revolution. This perfor- 
mance happened to give less displeasure to the Whigs, and was 
better received. It not only rose itself, but helped to buoy up 
its unfortunate brother. But though I had been taught by 
experience that the Whig party were in possession of bestow- 
ing all places, both in the state and in literature, I was so little 
inchned to yield to their senseless clamor, that in about a 
hundred alterations, which farther study, reading, or reflection 
engaged me to make, in the reigns of the first two Stuarts, I 
have made all of them invariably to the Tory side, . . . 

I returned to Edinburgh in 1769, very opulent (for I possessed 
a revenue of £1000 a year), healthy, and, though somewhat 
stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, 
and of seeing the increase of my reputation. In spring 1775 I 
was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me 
no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and 
incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suf- 
fered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more 
strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my per- 
son, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits; inso- 
much that, were I to name the period of my life which I should 
most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to 
this latter period. I possess the same ardor as ever in study, 
and the same gayety in company. I consider, besides, that a 
man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmi- 
ties; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputa- 
tion's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I 



420 DAVID HUME 

could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more 
detached from life than I am at present. 

To conclude historically with my own character. I am, or 
rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of 
myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments) , 
— I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of 
temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humor, capable of at- 
tachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great mod- 
eration in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my 
ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my 
frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable 
to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary ; 
and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest 
women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I 
met with from them. In a word, though most men anywise emi- 
nent have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was 
touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and though I 
wantonl}'- exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious 
factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their 
wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any 
one circumstance of my character and conduct ; not but that 
the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to 
invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they 
could never find any which they thought would wear the face 
of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this 
funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; 
and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascer- 
tained. 



SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

[ESSAY ON THE IDEA OF BEAUTY] 

1759 

[This essay is one of three contributed to The Idler by Reynolds, from 
his friendship for Dr. Johnson; the other two being Numbers 76 and 79. 
His discussion of the present subject is significant as representing that idea 
of the general as the fundamental element in art, which dominated a great 
part of eighteenth-century aesthetics, and affected both the painting and 
the poetry of the period.] 

No. 82. November 10, 1759 

Discoursing in my last letter on the different practice of the 
Italian and Dutch painters, I observed that "the Italian 
painter attends only to the invariable, the great and general 
ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature." I was 
led into the subject of this letter by endeavoring to fix the ori- 
ginal cause of this conduct of the Italian masters. If it can be 
proved that by this choice they selected the most beautiful part 
of the creation, it will show how much their principles are 
founded on reason, and, at the same time, discover the origin 
of our ideas of beauty. 

I suppose it will be easily granted that no man can judge 
whether any animal be beautiful in its kind, or deformed, who 
has seen only one of that species. That is as conclusive in re- 
gard to the human figure; so that if a man born blind was to 
recover his sight, and the most beautiful woman was brought 
before him, he could not determine whether she was handsome 
or not ; nor, if the most beautiful and most deformed were pro- 
duced, could he any better determine to which he should give 
the preference, having seen only those two. To distinguish 
beauty, then, implies the having seen many individuals of that 
species. If it is asked, how is more skill acquired by the obser- 
vation of greater numbers? I answer that, in consequence of 
having seen many, the power is acquired, even without seek- 
ing after it, of distinguishing between accidental blemishes 
and excrescences, which are continually varying the surface of 



422 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

Nature's works, and the invariable general form which Nature 
most frequently produces and always seems to intend in her 
productions. 

Thus amongst the blades of grass or leaves of the same tree, 
though no two can be found exactly alike, yet the general form 
is invariable. A naturalist, before he chose one as a sample, 
would examine many; since, if he took the first that occurred, 
it might have, by accident or otherwise, such a form as that it 
would scarcely be known to belong to that species. He selects, 
as the painter does, the most beautiful — that is, the most 
general — form of nature. 

Every species of the animal, as well as the vegetable, crea- 
tion, may be said to have a fixed or determinate form, towards 
which Nature is continually inclining, like various lines ter- 
minating in the centre; or it may be compared to pendulums, 
vibrating in different directions over one central point; and as 
they all cross the centre, though only one passes through any 
other point, so it will be found that perfect beauty is oftener 
produced by Nature than deformity, — I do not mean than 
deformity in general, but than any one kind of deformity. To 
instance in a particular part of a feature: the line that forms the 
ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is straight; this, then, is 
the central form, which is oftener found than either concave, 
convex, or any other irregular form that shall be proposed. As 
we are then more accustomed to beauty than deformity, we 
may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and ad- 
mire it, as we approve and admire customs and fashions of 
dress for no other reason than that we are used to them; so 
that, though habit and custom cannot be said to be the cause of 
beauty, it is certainly the cause of our liking it. And I have no 
doubt but that, if we were more used to deformity than beauty, 
deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take 
that of beauty; as, if the whole world should agree that yes and 
no should change their meanings, yes would then deny, and no 
would affirm. 

Whoever undertakes to proceed farther in this argument, 
and endeavors to fix a general criterion of beauty respecting 
different species, or to show why one species is more beautiful 
than another, it will be required from him first to prove that 
one species is really more beautiful than another. That we pre- 



THE IDEA OF BEAUTY 423 

fer one to the other, and with very good reason, will be readily 
granted; but it does not follow from thence that we think it a 
more beautiful form, for we have no criterion of form by which 
to determine our judgment. He who says a swan is more beau- 
tiful than a dove, means little more than that he has more 
pleasure in seeing a swan than a dove, either from the stateKness 
of its motions or its being a more rare bird. And he who gives 
the preference to the dove, does it from some association of 
ideas of innocence that he always annexes to the dove; but if 
he pretends to defend the preference he gives to one or the 
other, by endeavoring to prove that this more beautiful form 
proceeds from a particular gradation of magnitude, undulation 
of a curve, or direction of a line, or whatever other conceit of his 
imagination he shall fix on as S, criterion of form, he will be con- 
tinually contradicting himself, and find at last that the great 
mother of nature will not be subjected to such narrow rules. 
Among the various reasons why we prefer one part of her works 
to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and custom. 
Custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black 
white; it is custom alone determines our preference of the color 
of the Europeans to the Ethiopians, and they, for the same 
reason, prefer their own color to ours. I suppose nobody will 
doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the goddess of 
beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick lips, 
flat nose, and woolly hair. And it seems to me he would act 
very unnaturally if he did not; for by what criterion will any 
one dispute the propriety of his idea? We indeed say that the 
form and color of the European is preferable to that of the 
Ethiopian; but I know of no other reason we have for it, but 
that we are more accustomed to it. It is absurd to say that 
beauty is possessed of attractive powers, which irresistibly seize 
the corresponding mind with love and admiration, since that 
argument is equally conclusive in the favor of the white and the 
black philosopher. The black and white nations must, in re- 
spect of beauty, be considered as of different kinds, at least 
a different species of the same kind; from one of which to the 
other, as I observed, no inference can be drawn. 

Novelty is said to be one of the causes of beauty. That nov- 
elty is a very sufficient reason why we should admire, is not 
denied; but because it is uncommon, is it therefore beautiful? 



424 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

The beauty that is produced by color, as when we prefer one 
bird to another, though of the same form, on account of its 
color, has nothing to do with this argument, which reaches only 
to form. I have here considered the word beauty as being prop- 
erly applied to form alone. There is a necessity of fixing this 
confined sense ; for there can be no argument, if the sense of the 
word is extended to everything that is approved. A rose may 
as well be said to be beautiful because it has a fine smell, as a 
bird because of its color. When we apply the word beauty, we 
do not mean always by it a more beautiful form, but something 
valuable on account of its rarity, usefulness, color, or any other 
property. A horse is said to be a beautiful animal; but, had a 
horse as few good qualities as a tortoise, I do not imagine that 
he would be then esteemed beautiful. 

A fitness to the end proposed is said to be another cause of 
beauty. But supposing we were proper judges of what form is 
the most proper in an animal to constitute strength or swift- 
ness, we always determine concerning its beauty before we 
exert our understanding to judge of its fitness. 

From what has been said it may be inferred that the works of 
nature, if we compare one species with another, are all equally 
beautiful; and that preference is given from custom, or some 
association of ideas; and that, in creatures of the same species, 
beauty is the medium or centre of all its various forms. To 
conclude, then, by way of corollary: if it has been proved that 
the painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of 
nature, produces beauty, he must, by regarding minute par- 
ticularities and accidental discriminations, deviate from the 
universal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity. 



LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

[These Letters, representing the most brilliant-pcJitkal invective of 
EngHsh historical literature, appeared in the Public Advertiser between 
November 1768 and January 1772 (the first of the letters which reappeared 
in the collected edition was that of January 21, 1769). They were partially 
collected for publication in book form in 1769; the corrected author's 
edition appeared in 1772. The authorship has remained a secret to this 
day, having been attributed, at various times, to some forty different per- 
sons. The most prevalent theory, however, has been that Junius was Sir 
PhiUp Francis (1740-18 18). (See, for discussions of the subject, the article 
on Junius in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, and Leslie Stephen's article on 
Francis in the Dictionary of National Biography.) Whoever Junius was, 
he represented that branch of the Whigs which was especially attached 
to George Grenville and his brother Lord Temple. The letters created no 
small excitement in political circles, at the time of publication; the chief 
sensation was due to the letter to the King, of December 19, 1769, a part 
of which is reprinted below.] 

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEDFORD 

September 19, 1769. 
My Lord: 

You are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect 
or esteem from the public, that if, in the following lines, a com- 
pliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you 
would consider it as a mockery of your established character, 
and perhaps an insult to your understanding. You have nice 
feelings, my Lord, if we may judge from your resentments. 
Cautious, therefore, of giving offense where you have so little 
deserved it, I shall leave the illustration of your virtues to other 
hands. Your friends have a privilege to play upon the easiness 
of your temper, or possibly they are better acquainted with 
your good qualities than I am. You have done good by stealth. 
The rest is upon record. You have still left ample room for 
speculation, when paneg>Tic is exhausted. 
\ You are indeed a very considerable man. The highest rank, 
a splendid fortune, and a name glorious, till it was yours, were 
sufficient to have supported you with meaner abilities than I 
think you possess. From the first, you derived a constitutional 
claim to respect; from the second, a natural extensive author- 



426 LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

ity; the last created a partial expectation of hereditary virtues. 
The use you have made of these uncommon advantages might 
have been more honorable to yourself, but could not be more 
instructive to mankind. We may trace it in the veneration of 
your country, the choice of your friends, and in the accompHsh- 
ment of every sanguine hope which the public might have con- 
ceived from the illustrious name of Russell. 

The eminence of your station gave you a commanding pros- 
pect of your duty. The road which led to honor was open to 
your view. You could not lose it by mistake, and you had no 
temptation to depart from it by design. Compare the natural 
dignity and importance of the richest peer of England, the 
noble independence which he might have maintained in Par- 
Uament, and the real interest and respect which he might have 
acquired, not only in Parliament, but through the whole king- 
dom, — compare these glorious distinctions with the ambition 
of holding a share in government, the emoluments of a place, 
the sale of a borough, or the purchase of a corporation; and, 
though you may not regret the virtues which create respect, 
you may see with anguish how much real importance and au- 
thority you have lost. Consider the character of an inde- 
pendent, virtuous Duke of Bedford; imagine what he might 
be in this country; then reflect one moment upon what you 
are. 

If it be possible for me to withdraw my attention from the 
fact, I will tell you in theory what such a man might be. Con- 
scious of his own weight and importance, his conduct in Parlia- 
ment would be directed by nothing but the constitutional duty 
of a peer. He would consider himself as a guardian of the laws. 
Willing to support the just measures of government, but de- 
termined to observe the conduct of the minister with suspicion, 
he would oppose the violence of faction with as much firmness 
as the encroachments of prerogative. He would be as little 
capable of bargaining with the minister for places for himself 
or his dependents, as of descending to mix himself in the in- 
trigues of opposition. Whenever an important question called 
for his opinion in Parliament, he would be heard by the most 
profligate minister with deference and respect. His authority 
would either sanctify or disgrace the measures of government. 
The people would look up to him as their protector, and a 



LETTERS OF JUNIUS 427 

virtuous prince would have one honest man in his do- 
minions, in whose integrity and judgment he might safely 
confide. . . . 

Your Grace may probably discover something more intelli- 
gible in the negative part of this illustrious character. The man 
I have described would never prostitute his dignity in ParUa- 
ment by an indecent violence, either in opposing or defending 
a minister. He would not at one moment rancorously perse- 
cute, at another basely cringe to, the favorite of his sovereign. 
yAfter outraging the royal dignity with peremptory conditions, 
little short of menace and hostility, he would never descend to 
the humility of soliciting an interview with the favorite, and of 
offering to recover, at any price, the honor of his friendship. 
Though deceived, perhaps, in his youth, he would not, through 
the course of a long life, have invariably chosen his friends from 
among the most profligate of mankind. His own honor would 
have forbidden him from mixing his private pleasures or con- 
versation with jockeys, gamesters, blasphemers, gladiators, or 
buffoons. He would then have never felt, much less would he 
have submitted to, the dishonest necessity of engaging in the 
interest and intrigues of his dependents, — of supplying their 
vices, or relieving their beggary, at the expense of his coun-/ 
try. . . . 

A great man, in the success and even in the magnitude of his 
crimes, finds a rescue from contempt. Your Grace is every way 
unfortunate. ... It may, perhaps, be a pleasure to reflect 
that there is hardly a corner of any of His Majesty's dominions, 
except France, in which, at one time or other, your valuable 
life has not been in danger. Amiable man! we see and acknow- 
ledge the protection of Providence, by which you have so often 
escaped the personal detestation of your fellow-subjects, and 
are still reserved for the public justice of your country. . . . 

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER 

December 19, 1769. 
Sir: 

When the complaints of a brave and powerful people are ob- 
served to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have suf- 
fered; when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused 
to resistance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior 



428 LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign and 
to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of diffi- 
culty and danger, at which flattery and falsehood can no longer 
deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled. Let us 
suppose it arrived: let us suppose a gracious, well-intentioned 
prince made sensible, at last, of the great duty he owes to his 
people, and of his own disgraceful situation; that he looks 
round him for assistance, and asks for no advice but how to 
gratify the wishes and secure the happiness of his subjects. In 
these circumstances, it may be matter of curious speculation to 
consider, if an honest man were permitted to approach a king, 
in what terms he would address himself to his sovereign. Let it 
be imagined, no matter how improbable, that the first prejudice 
against his character is removed, that the ceremonious diffi- 
culties of an audience are surmounted; that he feels himself 
animated by the purest and most honorable affections to his 
king and country; and that the great person whom he addresses 
has spirit enough to bid him speak freely, and understanding 
enough to listen to him with attention. Unacquainted with the 
vain impertinence of forms, he would deliver his sentiments 
with dignity and firmness, but not without respect. 

Sir: It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause 
of every reproach and distress which has attended your gov- 
ernment, that you should never have been acquainted with the 
language of truth, until you heard it in the complaints of your 
people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your 
education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allow- 
ance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and 
to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence 
of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a 
direct, deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of 
your subjects, on which all their civil and political liberties 
depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion 
so dishonorable to your character, we should long since have 
adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility 
of complaint. The doctrine inculcated by our laws, that ''the 
king can do no wrong," is admitted without reluctance. We 
separate the amiable, good-natured prince from the folly and 
treachery of his servants, and the private virtues of the 
man from the vices of his government. Were it not for this 



LETTERS OF JUNIUS '429 

just distinction, I know not whether your Majesty's condi- 
tion, or that of the English nation, would deserve most to be 
lamented. . . . 

If an English king be hated or despised, he must be unhappy; 
and this, perhaps, is the only political truth which he ought to 
be convinced of without experiment. But if the English peo- 
ple should no longer confine their resentment to a submissive 
representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious exam- 
ple of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the crea- 
ture of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them 
the rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surren- 
der, — let me ask you , Sir, upon what part of your subjects would 
you rely for assistance? 

The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and op- 
pressed. In return, they give you every day fresh marks of their 
resentment. They despise the miserable governor you have 
sent them, because he is the creature of Lord Bute; nor is it 
from any natural confusion in their ideas that they are so ready 
to confound the original of a king with the disgraceful repre- 
sentation of him. 

The distance of the colonies would make it impossible for 
them to take an active concern in your afi"airs, if they were as 
well affected to your government as they once pretended to be 
to your person. They were ready enough to distinguish be- 
tween you and your ministers. They complained of an act of 
the legislature, but traced the origin of it no higher than to the 
servants of the crown ; they pleased themselves with the hope 
that their sovereign, if not favorable to their cause, at least was 
impartial. The decisive personal part you took against them 
has effectually banished that first distinction from their minds. 
They consider you as united with your servants against Amer- 
ica, and know not how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal 
parliament on one side, from the real sentiments of the English 
people on the other. Looking forward to independence, they 
might possibly receive you for their king; but if ever you retire 
to America, be assured they will give you such a Covenant to 
digest as the Presbytery of Scotland would have been ashamed 
to offer to Charles the Second. They left their native land in 
search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they 
are into a thousand forms of policy and religion, there is one 



430 LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

point in which they all agree : they equally detest the pageantry 
of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop. 

It is not, then, from the alienated affections of Ireland or 
America that you can reasonably look for assistance; still less 
from the people of England, who are actually contending for 
their rights, and in this great question are parties against you. 
You are not, however, destitute of every appearance of sup- 
port; you have all the Jacobites, Nonjurors, Roman Catholics, 
and Tories of this country, and all Scotland, without exception. 
Considering from what family you are descended, the choice of 
your friends has been singularly directed; and truly, Sir, if you 
had not lost the Whig interest of England, I should admire your 
dexterity in turning the hearts of your enemies. . . . 

As to the Scotch, I must suppose your heart and understand- 
ing so biased, from your earliest infancy, in their favor, that 
nothing less than your own misfortunes can undeceive you. 
You will not accept of the uniform experience of your ances- 
tors; and, when once a man is determined to believe, the very 
absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith. A bigoted 
understanding can draw a proof of attachment to the house of 
Hanover from a notorious zeal for the house of Stuart, and find 
an earnest of future loyalty in former rebellions. Appearances 
are, however, in their favor, — so strongly, indeed, that one 
would think they had forgotten that you are their lawful king, 
and had mistaken you for a pretender to the crown. Let 
it be admitted, then, that the Scotch are as sincere in their 
present professions as if you were, in reality, not an English- 
man, but a Briton of the North. You would not be the first 
prince of their native country against whom they have rebelled, 
nor the first whom they have basely betrayed. . . . 

From the uses to which one part of the army has been too fre- 
quently applied, you have some reason to expect that there are 
no services they would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiaHty 
of your understanding. You take the sense of the army from 
the conduct of the Guards, with the same justice with which 
you collect the sense of the people from the representations of 
the ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the 
Guards their example, either as soldiers or subjects. They feel, 
and resent — as they ought to do — that invariable, undis- 
tinguishing favor with which the Guards are treated; while 



LETTERS OF JUNIUS 431 

those gallant troops by whom every hazardous, every laborious 
service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or 
pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. If they had 
no sense of the great original duty they owe their country, their 
resentment would operate Hke patriotism, and leave your cause 
to be defended by those to whom you have lavished the rewards 
and honors of their profession. The Pretorian bands, enervated 
and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe 
the Roman populace, but when the distant legions took the 
alarm, they marched to Rome, and gave away the empire. 

On this side, then, whichever way you turn your eyes, you 
see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may determine 
to support the very ministry who have reduced your affairs to 
this deplorable situation; you may shelter yourself under the 
forms of a parliament, and set your people at defiance; but be 
assured, Sir, that such a resolution would be as imprudent as it 
would be odious. If it did not immediately shake your estab- 
lishment, it would rob you of your peace of mind forever. . . . 

These sentiments, Sir, and the style they are conveyed in, 
may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accus- 
tomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections 
by the vehemence of their expressions; and when they only 
praise you indifferently, you admire their sincerity. But this 
is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you. Sir, 
who tell you that you have many friends whose affections are 
founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first 
foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, 
but the equality with which they are received and may be 
returned. The fortune which made you a king forbade you to 
have a friend. It is a law of nature, which cannot be violated 
with impunity. The mistaken prince who looks for friendship 
will find a favorite, and in that favorite the ruin of his affairs. 

ThFpeople of England are loyal to the house of Hanover; not 
from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a con- 
viction that the establishment of that family was necessary to 
the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, Sir, is a 
principle of allegiance equally soHd and rational, fit for Eng- 
lishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty's encourage- 
ment. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The 
name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the 



432 LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince 
who imitates their conduct should be warned by their exam- 
ple; and, while he plumes himself upon the security of his title 
to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one 
revolution, it may be lost by another. 

TO HIS GEACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON 

September 28, 1771. 
My Lord: 

The people of England are not apprised of the full extent of 
their obligations to you. They have yet no adequate idea of 
the endless variety of your character. They have seen you dis- 
tinguished and successful in the continued violation of those 
moral and political duties by which the little as well as the 
great societies of life are connected and held together. Every 
color, every character became you. With a rate of abilities 
which Lord Weymouth very justly looks down upon with con- 
tempt, you have done as much mischief to the community as 
Cromwell would have done, if Cromwell had been a coward, 
and as much as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that 
an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society. To a 
thinking man the influence of the crown will in no view appear 
so formidable as when he observes to what enormous excesses 
it has safely conducted your Grace, without a ray of real under- 
standing, without even the pretension to common decency or 
principle of any kind, or a single spark of personal resolution. 
What must be the operation of that pernicious influence (for 
which our kings have wisely exchanged the nugatory name of 
prerogative), that in the highest stations can so abundantly 
supply the absence of virtue, courage, and abilities, and qualify 
a man to be the minister of a great nation, whom a private gen- 
tleman would be ashamed and afraid to admit into his family! 
Like the universal passport of an ambassador, it supersedes the 
prohibition of the laws, banishes the staple virtues of the coun- 
try, and introduces vice and folly triumphantly into all the 
departments of the state. Other princes, besides His Majesty, 
have had the means of corruption within their reach, but they 
have used it with moderation. In former times, corruption 
was considered as a foreign auxiliary to government, and only 
called in upon extraordinary emergencies. The unfeigned piety, 



LETTERS OF JUNIUS 433 

the sanctified religion, of George the Third, have taught him to 
new model the civil forces of the state. The natural resources 
of the crown are no longer confided in. Corruption glitters in the 
van, collects and maintains a standing army of mercenaries, 
and at the same moment impoverishes and enslaves the country. 
His Majesty's predecessors (excepting that worthy family from 
which you, my Lord, are unquestionably descended) had some 
generous qualities in their composition, with vices, I confess, or 
frailties in abundance. They were kings or gentlemen, not 
hypocrites or priests. They were at the head of the Church, 
but did not know the value of their office. They said their 
prayers without ceremony, and had too little priestcraft in 
their understanding to reconcile the sanctimonious forms of 
religion with the utter destruction of the morality of their 
people. 

My Lord, this is fact, not declamation. With all your par- 
tiality to the house of Stuart, you must confess that even 
Charles the Second would have blushed at that open encourage- 
ment, at those eager, meretricious caresses, with which every 
species of private vice and public prostitution is received at St. 
James's. The unfortunate house of Stuart has been treated 
with an asperity which, if comparison be a defense, seems to 
border upon injustice. Neither Charles nor his brother were 
qualified to support such a system of measures as would be 
necessary to change the government and subvert the constitu- 
tion of England. One of them was too much in earnest in his 
pleasures, the other in his religion. But the danger to this 
country would cease to be problematical, if the crown should 
ever descend to a prince whose apparent simplicity might 
throw his subjects off their guard, — who might be no libertine 
in behavior, who should have no sense of honor to restrain him, 
and who, with just religion enough to impose upon the multi- 
tude, might have no scruples of conscience to interfere with his 
morality. With these honorable qualifications, and the decisive 
advantage of situation, low craft and falsehood are all the abil- 
ities that are wanting to destroy the wisdom of ages, and to 
deface the noblest monument that human policy has erected. I 
know such a man; my Lord, I know you both; and, with the 
blessing of God (for I, too, am religious), the people of England 
shall know you as well as I do. . . . From whatever origin 



434 LETTERS OF JUNIUS 

your influence in this country arises, it is a phenomenon in the 
history of human virtue and understanding. Good men can 
hardly believe the fact ; wise men are unable to account for it ; 
religious men find exercise for their faith, and make it the last 
effort of their piety not to repine against Providence. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
THE BEE 

1759 

[This_periodical appeared on October 6, 1759, at the beginning of Gold- 
smith's career as a hack writer; it lasted through only eight weekly num- 
bers. Each number contained from three to five essays, all apparently 
written by Goldsmith himself. The "Reverie" here represented is from 
No. 5.] 

A REVERIE 

... I FANCIED myself placed in the yard of a large inn, in which 
there were an infinite number of wagons and stage-coaches, 
attended by fellows who either invited the company to take 
their places, or were busied in packing their baggage. Each 
vehicle had its inscription, showing the place of its destination. 
On one I could read, The Pleasure Stage-Coach; on another, 
The Wagon of Industry; on a third. The Vanity Whim; 
and on a fourth, The Landau of Riches. I had some inclina- 
tion to step into each of these, one after another; but, I know 
not by what means, I passed them by, and at last fixed my eye 
upon a small carriage, berlin fashion, which seemed the most 
convenient vehicle at a distance in the world, and upon my 
nearer approach found it to be The Fame Machine. 

I instantly made up to the coachman, whom I found to be an 
affable and seemingly good-natured fellow. He informed me 
that he had but a few days ago returned from the Temple of 
Fame, to which he had been carrying Addison, Swift, Pope, 
Steele, Congreve, and Colley Gibber; that they made but in- 
different company by the way; and that he once or twice was 
going to empty his berlin of the whole cargo. "However," says 
he, "I got them all safe home, with no other damage than a 
black eye which Colley gave Mr. Pope, and am now returned 
for another coachful." 

"If that be all, friend," said I, "and if you are in want of 
company, I'll make one with all my heart. Open the door; I 
hope the machine rides easy." 



436 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

"Oh, for that, sir, extremely easy." But, still keeping the 
door shut, and measuring me with his eye — "Pray, sir, have 
you no luggage? You seem to be a good-natured sort of a gen- 
tleman, but I don't find you have got any luggage, and I never 
permit any to travel with me but such as have something valu- 
able to pay for coach-hire." 

Examining my pockets, I own I was not a little disconcerted 
at this unexpected rebuff; but, considering that I carried a num- 
ber of the Bee under my arm, I was resolved to open it in his 
eyes, and dazzle him with the splendor of the page. He read 
the title and contents, however, without any emotion, and 
assured me he had never heard of it before. 

"In short, friend," said he, now losing all his former respect, 
"you must not come in. I expect better passengers. But as 
you seem a harmless creature, perhaps, if there be room left, I 
may let you ride a while for charity." 

I now took my stand by the coachman at the door, and, 
since I could not command a seat, was resolved to be as useful 
as possible, and earn by my assiduity what I could not by my 
merit. 

The next that presented for a place was a most whimsical 
figure indeed.^ He was hung round with papers of his own com- 
posing, not unHke those who sing ballads in the streets, and 
came dancing up to the door with all the confidence of instant 
admittance. The volubility of his motion and address prevented 
my being able to read more of his cargo than the word Inspec- 
tor, which was written in great letters at the top of some of the 
papers. He opened the coach-door himself without any cere- 
mony, and was just slipping in when the coachman, with as 
little ceremony, pulled him back. Our figure seemed perfectly 
angry at this repulse, and demanded gentleman's satisfaction. 

"Lord, sir!" replied the coachman, "instead of proper lug- 
gage, by your bulk you seem loaded for a West India voyage. 
You are big enough, with all your papers, to crack twenty 
stage-coaches. Excuse me, indeed, sir, for you must not enter." 

Our figure now began to expostulate. He assured the coach- 
man that, though his baggage seemed so bulky, it was perfectly 
light, and that he would be contented with the smallest corner 

' John Hill, author of many miscellaneous writings and of the Inspector papers 
(I75I-3)- 



THE BEE 437 

of room. But Jehu was inflexible, and the carrier of the In- 
spectors was sent to dance back again, with all his papers flut- 
tering in the wind. We expected to have no more trouble from 
this quarter, when, in a few minutes, the same figure changed 
his appearance, like Harlequin upon the stage, and with the 
same confidence again made his approaches, dressed in lace, 
and carrying nothing but a nosegay. Upon coming near, he 
thrust the nosegay to the coachman's nose, grasped the brass, 
and seemed now resolved to enter by violence. I found the 
struggle soon begin to grow hot, and the coachman, who was a 
little old, unable to continue the contest. So, in order to ingra- 
tiate myself, I stepped in to his assistance, and our united 
efforts sent our literary Proteus, though worsted, unconquered 
still, dancing a rigadoon, and smelling to his own nosegay. 
V The person^ who after him appeared as candidate for a place 
in the stage came up with an air not quite so confident, but 
somewhat, however, theatrical; and, instead of entering, made 
the coachman a very low bow, which the other returned, and 
desired to see his baggage; upon which he instantly produced 
some farces, a tragedy, and other miscellany productions. The 
coachman, casting his eye upon the cargo, assured him at pre- 
sent he could not possibly have a place, but hoped in time he 
might aspire to one, as he seemed to have read in the book of 
Nature, without a careful perusal of which none ever found 
entrance at the Temple of Fame. 

"What!" replied the disappointed poet, "shall my tragedy, 
in which I have vindicated the cause of liberty and virtue — " 
-jC "Follow nature," returned the other, "and never expect to 
find lasting fame by topics which only please from their popu- 
larity. Had you been first in the cause of freedom, or praised 
in virtue more than an empty name, it is possible you might 
have gained admittance; but at present I beg, sir, you will 
stand aside for another gentleman whom I see approaching." 

This was a very grave personage,^ whom at some distance 
I took for one of the most reserved, and even disagreeable, 
figures I had seen; but as he approached his appearance im- 
proved, and when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I per- 
ceived that, in spite of the severity of his brow, he had one 

' Arthur Murphy, author of a tragedy called The Orphan oj China, etc. 
* Doctor Johnson. 



438 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

of the most good-natured countenances that could be imagined. 
Upon coming to open the stage-door, he lifted a parcel of folios 
into the seat before him, but our inquisitorial coachman at once 
shoved them out again. 

"What! not take in my Dictionary?" exclaimed the other, 
in a rage. 

"Be patient, sir," replied the coachman. "I have drove a 
coach, man and boy, these two thousand years, but I do not 
remember to have carried above one dictionary during the 
whole time. That little book which I perceive peeping from 
one of your pockets, — may I presume to ask what it con- 
tains? " 

"A mere trifle," repHed the author. "It is called the 
Rambler.^' 

"The Rambler!'' says the coachman. "I beg, sir, you'll take 
your place. I have heard our ladies in the court of Apollo fre- 
quently mention it with rapture ; and Clio, who happens to be a 
little grave, has been heard to prefer it to the Spectator, though 
others have observed that the reflections, by being refined, 
sometimes become minute." 

This grave gentleman was scarcely seated when another,^ 
whose appearance was something more modern, seemed willing 
to enter, yet afraid to ask. He carried in his hand a bundle 
of essays, of which the coachman was curious enough to inquire 
the contents. 

"These," replied the gentleman, "are rhapsodies against the 
religion of my country." 

"And how can you expect to come into my coach, after thus 
choosing the wrong side of the question?" 

"Ay, but I am right," repHed the other; "and if you give me 
leave, I shall in a few minutes state the argument." 

"Right or wrong," said the coachman, "he who disturbs 
religion is a blockhead, and he shall never travel in a coach of 
mine." 

"If, then," said the gentleman, mustering up all his courage, 
"if I am not to have admittance as an essayist, I hope I shall 
not be repulsed as an historian; the last volume of my history 
met with applause." 

"Yes," replied the coachman, "but I have heard only the 

1 Hume. 



THE BEE 439 

first approved at the Temple of Fame; and as I see you have it 
about you, enter, without further ceremony." 

My attention was now diverted to a crowd who were pushing 
forward a person ^ that seemed more incHned to the Stage- 
coach of Riches; but by their means he was driven forward to 
the same machine, which he nevertheless seemed heartily to de- 
spise. Impelled, however, by their solicitations, he steps up, 
flourishing a voluminous history, and demanding admittance. 

''Sir, I have formerly heard your name mentioned," says the 
coachman, "but never as an historian. Is there no other work 
upon which you may claim a place?" 

''None," replied the other, "except a romance. But this is a 
work of too trifling a nature to claim future attention." 

"You mistake," says the inquisitor. "A well-written ro- 
mance is no such easy task as is generally imagined. I remem- 
ber formerly to have carried Cervantes and Segrais; and, if you 
think fit, you may enter." 

Upon our three literary travelers coming into the same coach, 
I listened attentively to hear what might be the conversation 
that passed upon this extraordinary occasion; when, instead of 
agreeable or entertaining dialogue, I found them grumbling at 
each other, and each seemed discontented with his companions. 
Strange! thought I to myself, that they who are born to en- 
lighten the world should still preserve the narrow prejudices 
of childhood, and, by disagreeing, make even the highest merit 
ridiculous. Were the learned and the wise to unite against the 
dunces of society, instead of sometimes siding into opposite 
parties with them, they might throw a lustre upon each other's 
reputation, and teach every rank of subordinate merit, if not 
to admire, at least not to avow dislike. 

In the midst of these reflections I perceived the coachman, 
unmindful of me, had now mounted the box. Several were ap- 
proaching to be taken in, whose pretensions I was sensible were 
very just; I therefore desired him to stop and take in more 
passengers. But he replied, as he had now mounted the box, 
it v/ould be improper to come down, but that he should take 
them all, one after the other, when he should return. So he 
drove away; and for myself, as I could not get in, I mounted 
behind, in order to hear the conversation on the way. 

» Smollett. 



440 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 
1762 

'" [In its original form this work was a series of papers contributed to New- 
bery's Public Ledger, in 1760, under the title of " Chinese Letters." These 
were reprinted, with additions, as The Citizen of the World, m 1762. Most 
of the letters are supposed to be written by Lien Chi Altangi, a Chinese 
traveler stopping in London, to Fum Hoam, First President of the Cere- 
monial Academy at Pekin. The plan seems to have been suggested by a 
pamphlet of Horace Walpole's entitled A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese 
Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking (see Austin Dob- 
son's essay on The Citizen of the World in his Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
First Series).] 

LETTER IV 

The English seem as silent as the Japanese, yet vainer than 
the inhabitants of Siam. Upon my arrival I attributed that 
reserve to modesty which I now find has its origin in pride. 
Condescend to address them first, and you are sure of their 
acquaintance ; stoop to flattery, and you conciliate their friend- 
ship and esteem. They bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the 
miseries of life, without shrinking; danger only calls forth their 
fortitude; they even exult in calamity; but contempt is what 
they cannot bear. An Enghshman fears contempt more than 
death; he often flies to death as a refuge from its pressure, and 
dies when he fancies the world has ceased to esteem him. 

Pride seems the source not only of their national vices, but 
of their national virtues also. An Englishman is taught to love 
his king as his friend, but to acknowledge no other master than 
the laws which himself has contributed to enact. He despises 
those nations who, that one may be free, are all content to be 
slaves; who first lift a tyrant into terror, and then shrink under 
his power as if delegated from heaven. Liberty is echoed in all 
their assemblies; and thousands might be found ready to offer 
up their fives for the sound, though perhaps not one of all the 
number understands its meaning. The lowest mechanic, how- 
ever, looks upon it as his duty to be a watchful guardian of his 
country's freedom, and often uses a language that might seem 
haughty even in the mouth of the great emperor who traces his 
ancestry to the Moon. 

A few days ago, passing by one of their prisons, I could not 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 441 

avoid stopping, in order to listen to a dialogue which I thought 
might afford me some entertainment. The conversation was 
carried on between a debtor, through the grate of his prison, 
a porter who had stopped to rest his burden, and a soldier at 
the window. The subject was upon a threatened invasion from 
France, and each seemed extremely anxious to rescue his coun- 
try from the impending danger. "For my part," cries the 
prisoner, " the greatest of my apprehensions is for our freedom. 
If the French should conquer, what would become of EngHsh 
liberty? My dear friends, liberty is the Englishman's preroga- 
tive; we must preserve that at the expense of our lives; of that 
the French shall never deprive us. It is not to be expected 
that men who are slaves themselves would preserve our free- 
dom should they happen to conquer." 

" Ay, slaves," cries the porter; " they are all slaves, fit only to 
carry burdens, every one of them. Before I would stoop to 
slavery, may this be my poison!" (and he held the goblet in his 
hand) " May this be my poison! But I would sooner list for a 
soldier." 

The soldier, taking the goblet from his friend, with much awe 
fervently cried out, "It is not so much our liberties as our 
religion that would suffer by such a change; ay, our religion, my 
lads. May the devil sink me in flames," (such was the solemn- 
ity of his adjuration) "if the French should come over, but our 
religion would be utterly undone ! " So saying, instead of a liba- 
tion, he applied the goblet to his lips, and confirmed his senti- 
ments with a ceremony of the most persevering devotion. 

In short, every man here pretends to be a politician; even the 
fair sex are sometimes found to mix the severity of national 
altercation with the blandishments of love, and often become 
conquerors by more weapons of destruction than their eyes. 

This universal passion for politics is gratified by daily ga- 
zettes, as with us in China. But as in ours the emperor en- 
deavors to instruct his people, in theirs the people endeavor to 
instruct the administration. You must not, however, imagine 
that they who compile these papers have any actual knowledge 
of the politics or the government of a state; they only collect 
their materials from the oracle of some coffee-house, which 
oracle has himself gathered them the night before from a beau 
at a gaming-table, who had pillaged his knowledge from a great 



442 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

man's porter, who has had his information from the great 
man's gentleman, who has invented the whole story for his own 
amusement, the night preceding. 

The English, in general, seem fonder of gaining the esteem 
than the love of those they converse with. This gives a formal- 
ity to their amusements; their gayest conversations have some- 
thing too wise for innocent relaxation. Though in company you 
are seldom disgusted with the absurdity of a fool, you are 
seldom lifted into rapture by those strokes of vivacity which 
give instant, though not permanent pleasure. 

What they want, however, in gayety, they make up in polite- 
ness. You smile at hearing me praise the English for their 
politeness; you have heard very different accounts from the 
missionaries at Pekin, who have seen such a different behavior 
in their merchants and seamen at home. But I must still repeat 
it, — the English seem more polite than any of their neighbors. 
Their great art in this resepct lies in endeavoring, while they 
oblige, to lessen the force of the favor. Other countries are fond 
of obliging a stranger, but seem desirous that he should be 
sensible of the obligation. The English confer their kindness 
with an appearance of indifference, and give away benefits with 
an air as if they despised them. 

Walking, a few days ago, between an English and a French 
man, into the suburbs of the city, we were overtaken by a heavy 
shower of rain. I was unprepared; but they had each large 
coats, which defended them from what seemed to me a perfect 
inundation. The Englishman, seeing me shrink from the 
weather, accosted me thus: " Psha, man! What dost shrink at? 
Here, take this coat; I don't want it. I find it no way useful to 
me; I had as lief be without it." The Frenchman began to show 
his politeness in turn. "My dear friend," cries he, " why won't 
you oblige me by making use of my coat? You see how well it 
defends me from the rain; I should not choose to part with it to 
others, but to such a friend as you I could even part with my 
skin to do him service." 

From such minute instances as these, most reverend Fum 
Hoam, I am sensible your sagacity will collect instruction. The 
volume of nature is the book of knowledge, and he becomes 
most wise who makes the most judicious selection. — Farewell. 



i 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 443 

LETTER XIII 

I am just returned from Westminster Abbey, the place of 
sepulture for the philosophers, heroes, and kings of England. 
What a gloom do monumental inscriptions and all the venerable 
remains of deceased merit inspire ! Imagine a temple marked 
with the hand of antiquity, solemn as religious awe, adorned 
with all the magnificence of barbarous profusion, dim windows, 
fretted pillars, long colonnades, and dark ceilings. Think, then, 
what were my sensations at being introduced to such a scene. I 
stood in the midst of the temple, and threw my eyes round on 
the walls, filled with the statues, the inscriptions, and the 
monuments of the dead. Alas! I said to myself, how does pride 
attend the puny child of dust even to the grave ! Even humble 
as I am, I possess more consequence in the present scene than 
the greatest hero of them all. They have toiled for an hour to 
gain a transient immortality, and are at length retired to the 
grave, where they have no attendant but the worm, none to 
flatter biit the epitaph. 

As I was indulging such reflections, a gentleman dressed in 
black, perceiving me to be a stranger, came up, entered into 
conversation, and politely offered to be my instructor and 
guide through the temple. "If any monument, "said he, "should 
particularly excite your curiosity, I shall endeavor to satisfy 
your demands." I accepted with thanks the gentleman's offer, 
adding that I was come to observe the policy, the wisdom, and 
the justice of the English, in conferring rewards upon deceased 
merit. " If adulation like this," continued I, " be properly con- 
ducted, as it can no ways injure those who are flattered, so it 
may be a glorious incentive to those who are now capable of 
enjoying it. It is the duty of every good government to turn 
this monumental pride to its own advantage, to become strong 
in the aggregate from the weakness of the individual. If none 
but the truly great have a place in this awful repository, a tem- 
ple like this will give the finest lessons of morality, and be a 
strong incentive to true ambition. I am told that none have a 
place here but characters of the most distinguished merit." 

The Man in Black seemed impatient at my observations, so I 
discontinued my remarks, and we walked on together to take a 
view of every particular monument in order as it lay. As the 



444 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

eye is naturally caught by the finest objects, I could not avoid 
being particularly curious about one monument which appeared 
more beautiful than the rest. " That," said I to my guide, " I 
take to be the tomb of some very great man. By the peculiar 
excellence of the workmanship, and the magnificence of the 
design, this must be a trophy raised to the memory of some king 
who has saved his country from ruin, or lawgiver who has 
reduced his fellow-citizens from anarchy into just subjection." 

''It is not requisite," replied my companion, smiUng, " to 
have such qualifications in order to have a very fine monument 
here. More humble abihties will suffice." 

'' What! I suppose, then, the gaining two or three battles, or 
the taking half a score towns, is thought a sufl&cient quahfi- 
cation? " 

" Gaining battles or taking towns," replied the Man in 
Black, "may be of service; but a gentleman may have a very 
fine monument here without ever seeing a battle or a siege." 

"This, then, is the monument of some poet, I presume, — of 
one whose wit has gained him immortality?" 

"No, sir," replied my guide, "the gentleman who lies here 
never made verses; and as for wit, he despised it in others, 
because he had none himself." 

' " Pray tell me, then, in a word," said I, peevishly, " what 
is the great man who lies here particularly remarkable for? " 

"Remarkable, sir?" said my companion. "Why, sir, the 
gentleman that lies here is remarkable, very remarkable, — for 
a tomb in Westminster Abbey." 

"But, head of my ancestors! how has he got here? I fancy 
he could never bribe the guardians of the temple to give him a 
place. Should he not be ashamed to be seen among company 
where even moderate merit would look like infamy?" 

"I suppose," replied the Man in Black, "the gentleman was 
rich, and his friends, as is usual is such a case, told him he was 
great. He readily believed them ; the guardians of the temple, 
as they got by the self-delusion, were ready to believe him too. 
So he paid his money for a fine monument; and the workman, 
as you see, has made him one of the most beautiful. Think not, 
however, that this gentleman is singular in his desire of being 
buried among the great. There are several others in the tem- 
ple who, hated and shunned by the great while alive, have 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 445 

come here fully resolved to keep them company now they are 
dead." 

As we walked along to a particular part of the temple, 
"There," says the gentleman, pointing with his finger, " that is 
the Poets' Corner. There you see the monuments of Shake- 
speare, and Milton, and Prior, and Drayton." 

" Drayton! " I replied. " I never heard of him before. But I 
have been told of one Pope — is he there? " 

'*It is time enough," repHed my guide, "these hundred 
years. He is not long dead; people have not done hating him 
yet." 

"Strange," cried I; "can any be found to hate a man whose 
life was wholly spent in entertaining and instructing his fellow- 
creatures?" 

"Yes," says my guide, " they hate him for that very reason. 
There is a set of men called answerers of books, who take 
upon them to watch the republic of letters, and distribute 
reputation by the sheet. These answerers have no other em- 
ployment but to cry out Dunce and Scribbler, to praise the 
dead and revile the living, to grant a man of confessed abili- 
ties some small share of merit, to applaud twenty blockheads 
in order to gain the reputation of candor, and to revile the 
moral character of the man whose writings they cannot injure. 
Such wretches are kept in pay by some mercenary bookseller, 
or more frequently the bookseller himself takes this dirty work 
off their hands, as all that is required is to be very abusive and 
very dull. Every poet of any genius is sure to find such enemies. 
He feels, though he seems to despise, their malice; they make 
him miserable here, and in the pursuit of empty fame at last 
he gains solid anxiety." 

"Has this been the case with every poet I see here? " cried I. 

"Yes, with every mother's son of them," replied he, "except 
he happened to be born a mandarin. If he has much money, he 
may buy reputation from your book-answerers, as well as a 
monument from the guardians of the temple." 

"But are there not some men of distinguished taste, as in 
China, who are willing to patronize men of merit, and soften 
the rancor of malevolent dullness?" 

"I own there are many," replied the Man in Black. "But 
alas! sir, the book-answerers crowd about them, and call them- 



446, OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

selves the writers of books, and the patron is too indolent to 
distinguish. Thus poets are kept at a distance, while their ene- 
mies eat up all their rewards at the mandarin's table." . . . 

LETTER XXI 

The English are as fond of seeing plays acted as the Chinese ; 
but there is a vast difference in the manner of conducting 
them. We play our pieces in the open air, the English theirs 
under cover; we act by daylight, they by the blaze of torches. 
One of our plays continues eight or ten days successively; an 
English piece seldom takes up above four hours in the repre- 
sentation. 

My companion in black, with whom I am now beginning to 
contract an intimacy, introduced me a few nights ago to the 
playhouse, where we placed ourselves conveniently at the foot 
of the stage. As the curtain was not drawn before my arrival, I 
had an opportunity of observing the behavior of the spectators, 
and indulging those reflections which novelty generally in- 
spires. The richest, in general, were placed in the lowest seats, 
and the poor rose above them in degrees proportioned to their 
poverty. The order of precedence seemed here inverted ; those 
who were undermost all the day now enjoyed a temporary 
eminence, and became masters of the ceremonies. It was they 
who called for the music, indulging every noisy freedom, and 
testifying all the insolence of beggary in exaltation. 

They who held the middle region seemed not so riotous as 
those above them, nor yet so tame as those below. To judge by 
their looks, many of them seemed strangers there as well as my- 
self; they were chiefly employed, during this period of expecta- 
tion, in eating oranges, reading the story of the play, or making 
assignations. 
. /' Those who sat in the lowest rows, which are called the pit, 
seemed to consider themselves as judges of the merit of the poet 
and the performers. They were assembled partly to be amused, 
and partly to show their taste; appearing to labor under that 
restraint which an affectation of superior discernment generally 
produces. My companion, however, informed me that not one 
in a hundred of them knew even the first principles of criticism ; 
that they assumed the right of being censors because there was 
none to contradict their pretensions, and that every man who 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 



447 



now called himself a connoisseur became such to all intents and 
purposes. 

Those who sat in the boxes appeared in the most unhappy- 
situation of all. The rest of the audience came merely for their 
own amusement; these, rather to furnish out a part of the enter- 
tainment themselves. I could not avoid considering them as 
acting parts in dumb show, — not a curtesy or nod that was not 
the result of art; not a look nor a smile that was not designed 
for murder. Gentlemen and ladies ogled each other through 
spectacles; for my companion observed that blindness was of 
late becorne fashionable. All affected indifference and ease, 
while their hearts at the same time burnt for conquest. Upon 
the whole, the lights, the music, the ladies in their gayest 
dresses, the men with cheerfulness and expectation in their 
looks, all conspired to make a most agreeable picture, and to 
fill a heart that sympathizes at human happiness with inex- 
pressible serenity. 

The expected time for the play to begin at last arrived. The 
curtain was drawn, and the actors came on. A woman, who 
personated a queen, came in curtesying to the audience, who 
clapped their hands upon her appearance. Clapping of hands 
is, it seems, the manner of applauding in England; the manner 
is absurd, but every country, you know, has its peculiar ab- 
surdities. I was equally surprised, however, at the submission 
of the actress, who should have considered herself as a queen, 
as at the little discernment of the audience who gave her such 
marks of applause before she attempted to deserve them. Pre- 
liminaries between her and the audience being thus adjusted, 
the dialogue was supported between her and a most hopeful 
youth, who acted the part of her confidant. They both ap- 
peared in extreme distress, for it seems the queen had lost a child 
some fifteen years before, and still kept its dear resemblance 
next her heart, while her kind companion bore a part in her 
sorrows. Her lamentations grew loud; comfort is offered, but 
she detests the very sound; she bids them preach comfort to 
the winds. Upon this her husband comes in, who, seeing the 
queen so much afflicted, can himself hardly refrain from tears, 
or avoid partaking in the soft distress. After thus grieving 
through three scenes, the curtain dropped for the first act. 

"Truly," said I to my companion, "these kings and queens 



448 ■ OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

are very much disturbed at no very great misfortunes. Cer- 
tain I am, were people of humbler stations to act in this man- 
ner, they would be thought divested of common sense." 

I had scarce finished this observation, when the curtain rose, 
and the king came on in a violent passion. His wife had, it 
seems, refused his proffered tenderness, had spurned his royal 
embrace, and he seemed resolved not to survive her fierce dis- 
dain. After he had thus fretted, and the queen had fretted, 
through the second act, the curtain was let down once more. 

"Now," says my companion, "you perceive the king to be a 
man of spirit; he feels at every pore. One of your phlegmatic 
sons of clay would have given the queen her own way, and let 
her come to herself by degrees; but the king is for immediate 
tenderness, or instant death. Death and tenderness are leading 
passions of every modern buskined hero; this moment they 
embrace, and the next stab, mixing daggers and kisses in every 
period." 

I was going to second his remarks, when my attention was 
engrossed by a new object. A man came in balancing a straw 
upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all 
the raptures of applause. "To what purpose," cried I, "does 
this unmeaning figure make his appearance? Is he a part of 
the plot?" 

"Unmeaning do you call him?" rephed my friend in black. 
"This is one of the most important characters of the whole 
play. Nothing pleases the people more than the seeing a straw 
balanced; there is a great deal of meaning in the straw; there is 
something suited to every apprehension in the sight, and a 
fellow possessed of talents like these is sure of making his for- 
tune." 

y^The third act now began, with an actor who came to inform 
us that he was the villain of the play, and intended to show us 
strange things before all was over. He was joined by another 
who seemed as much disposed for mischief as he ; their intrigues 
continued through this whole division. "If that be a villain," 
said I, "hf must be a very stupid one to tell his secrets without 
being asked; such soliloquies of late are never admitted in 
China." 

The noise of clapping interrupted me once more; a child of 
six years old was learning to dance on the stage, which gave the 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 449 

ladies and mandarins infinite satisfaction. "I am sorry," said 
I, *'to see the pretty creature so early learning so bad a trade; 
dancing being, I presume, as contemptible here as it is in 
China." 

^J' Quite the reverse," interrupted my companion. "Dancing 
is a very reputable and genteel employment here ; men have a 
greater chance for encouragement from the merit of their heels 
than their heads. One who jumps up and flourishes his toes 
three times before he comes to the ground, may have three hun- 
dred a year. He who flourishes them four times gets four hun- 
dred ; but he who arrives at five is inestimable, and may demand 
what salary he thinks proper. The female dancers, too, are 
valued for this sort of jumping and crossing. But the fourth 
act is begun; let us be attentive." 

In the fourth act the queen finds her long-lost child, now 
grown up into a youth of smart parts and great qualifications ; 
wherefore she wisely considers that the crown will fit his head 
better than that of her husband, whom she knows to be a driv- 
eler. The king discovers her design, and here comes on the deep 
distress: he loves the queen, and he loves the kingdom; he re- 
solves, therefore, in order to possess both, that her son must 
die. The queen exclaims at his barbarity, is frantic with rage, 
and at length, overcome with sorrow, falls into a fit; upon which 
the curtain drops, and the act is concluded. 

"Observe the art of the poet," cries my companion. "When 
the queen can say no more, she falls into a fit. While thus her 
eyes are shut, while she is supported in the arms of Abigail, 
what horrors do we not fancy ! We feel it in every nerve. Take 
my word for it, that fits are the true aposiopesis of modern 
tragedy." 

The fifth act began, and a busy piece it was. Scenes shifting, 
trumpets sounding, mobs hallooing, carpets spreading, guards 
bustling from one door to another; gods, demons, daggers, 
racks, and ratsbane. But whether the king was killed, or the 
queen was drowned, or the son was poisoned, I have abso- 
lutely forgotten. 

When the play was over, I could not avoid observing that 
the persons of the drama appeared in as much distress in the 
first act as the last. "How is it possible," said I, "to sympa- 
thize with them through five long acts! Pity is but a short- 



450 OLIVER GOLDSMITH ' 

lived passion. I hate to hear an actor mouthing trifles; neither 
startings, strainings, nor attitudes, aflfect me, unless there be 
cause. After I have been once or twice deceived by those un- 
meaning alarms, my heart sleeps in peace, probably unaffected 
by the principal distress. There should be one great passion 
aimed at by the actor as well as the poet. All the rest should be 
subordinate, and only contribute to make that the greater. If 
the actor, therefore, exclaims upon every occasion in the tones 
of despair, he attempts to move us too soon ; he anticipates the 
blow, he ceases to affect, though he gains our applause." 

I scarce perceived that the audience were almost all departed ; 
wherefore, mixing with the crowd, my companion and I got 
into the street, where, essaying a hundred obstacles from 
coach-wheels and palanquin-poles, like birds in their flight 
through the branches of a forest, after various turnings, we 
both at length got home in safety. — Adieu. 

LETTER XLI 

Some time since I sent thee, O holy disciple of Confucius, an 
account of the grand abbey, or mausoleum, of the kings and 
heroes of this nation. "I have since been introduced to a temple 
not so ancient, but far superior in beauty and magnificence. 
In this, which is the most considerable of the empire, there are 
no pompous inscriptions, no flattery paid the dead, but all is ele- 
gant and awfully-simple. There are, however, a few rags hung 
round the walls, which have, at a vast expense, been taken from 
the enemy in the present war. The silk of which they are com- 
posed, when new, might be valued at half a string of copper 
money in China; yet this wise people fitted out a fleet and 
an army in order to seize them, though now grown old, and 
scarcely capable of being patched up into a handkerchief. By 
this conquest the English are said to have gained, and the 
French to have lost, much honor. Is the honor of European 
nations placed only in tattered silk? 
^ In this temple I was permitted to remain during the whole 
service; and were you not already acquainted with the rehgion 
of the English, you might from my description be inclined to 
believe them as grossly idolatrous as the disciples of Lao. The 
idol which they seem to address strides like a colossus over the 
door of the inner temple, which here, as with the Jews, is es- 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 451 

teemed the most sacred part of the building. Its oracles are de- 
livered in a hundred various tones, which seem to inspire the 
worshipers with enthusiasm and awe. An old woman, who 
appeared to be the priestess, was employed in various attitudes 
as she felt the inspiration. When it began to speak, all the 
people remained fixed in silent attention, nodding assent, look- 
ing approbation, appearing highly edified by those sounds which 
to a stranger might seem inarticulate and unmeaning. 

When the idol had done speaking, and the priestess had 
locked up its lungs with a key, observing almost all the com- 
pany leaving the temple, I concluded the service was over, and, 
taking my hat, was going to walk away with the crowd, when 
I was stopped by the Man in Black, who assured me that the 
ceremony had scarcely yet begun. 

"What!" cried I. "Do I not see almost the whole body of 
worshipers leaving the church? Would you persuade me that 
such numbers who profess religion and morality would, in this 
shameless manner, quit the temple before the service was con- 
cluded? You surely mistake ; not even the Kalmoucks would be 
guilty of such an indecency, though all the object of their wor- 
ship was but a joint-stool." 

My friend seemed to blush for his countrymen, assuring me 
that those whom I saw running away were only a parcel of 
musical blockheads, whose passion was merely for sounds, and 
whose heads were as empty as'a fiddle-case. "Those who remain 
behind," says he, "are the true religious. They make use of 
music to warm their hearts, and to lift them to a proper pitch 
of rapture. Examine their behavior, and you will confess there 
are some among us who practice true devotion." 

I now looked round me as he directed, but saw nothing of that 
fervent devotion which he had promised. One of the wor- 
shipers appeared to be ogling the company through a glass. 
Another was fervent, not in addresses to heaven, but to his mis- 
tress; a third whispered; a fourth took snuff; and the priest 
himself, in a drowsy tone, read over the "duties" of the day. 

"Bless my eyes!" cried I, as I happened to look toward the 
door, "what do I see? One of the worshipers fallen fast asleep, 
and actually sunk down on his cushion! He is now enjoying 
the benefit of a trance; or does he receive the influence of some 
mysterious vision?" 



452 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

"Alas! alas!" replied my companion. "No such thing. He 
has only had the misfortune of eating too hearty a dinner, and 
finds it impossible to keep his eyes open." 

Turning to another part of the temple, I perceived a young 
lady just in the same circumstances and attitude. "Strange!" 
cried I. "Can she too have over-eaten herself?" 

"Oh, fie!" replied my friend, "you now grow censorious. 
She grow drowsy from eating too much ! That would be profan- 
ation. She only sleeps now from having sat up all night at a 
brag party." 

"Turn me where I will, then," says I, "I can perceive no 
single symptom of devotion among the worshipers, except 
from that old woman in the corner, who sits groaning behind 
the long sticks of a mourning fan. She indeed seems greatly 
edified with what she hears." 

"Ay," replied my friend, "I knew we should find some to 
catch you. I know her; that is the deaf lady who lives in the 
cloisters." 
N^YIn short, the remissness of behavior in almost all the wor- 
shipers, and some even of the guardians, struck me with sur- 
prise. I had been taught to believe that none were ever pro- 
moted to offices in the temple but men remarkable for their 
superior sanctity, learning, and rectitude; that there was no 
such thing heard of as persons being introduced into the church 
merely to obhge a senator, or provide for the younger branch 
of a noble family. I expected, as their minds were continually 
set upon heavenly things, to see their eyes directed there also, 
and hoped from their behavior to perceive their inclinations 
corresponding with their duty. But I am since informed that 
some are appointed to preside over temples they never visit, 
and, while they receive all the money, are contented with 
letting others do all the good. — Adieu. 

LETTER LIV 

. . . Attracted by the serenity of the evening, my friend and 
I lately went to gaze upon the company in one of the public 
walks near the city. Here we sauntered together for some time, 
either praising the beauty of such as were handsome, or the 
dresses of such as had nothing else to recommend them. We 
had gone thus dehberately forward for some time, when, stop- 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 453 

ping on a sudden, my friend caught me by the elbow, and led 
me out of the public walk. I could perceive by the quickness 
of his pace, and by his frequently looking behind, that he was 
attempting to avoid somebody who followed. We now turned 
to the right, then to the left; as we went forward, he still went 
faster; but in vain; the person whom he attempted to escape 
hunted us through every doubling, and gained upon us each 
moment; so that at last we fairly stood still, resolving to face 
what we could not avoid. 

Our pursuer soon came up, and joined us with all the famil- 
iarity of an old acquaintance. "My dear Drybone," cries he, 
shaking my friend's hand, "where have you been hiding this 
half a century? Positively I had fancied you were gone to culti- 
vate matrimony and your estate in the country." 
> During the reply I had an opportunity of surveying the ap- 
pearance of our new companion. His hat was pinched up with 
peculiar smartness; his looks were pale, thin, and sharp; round 
his neck he wore a broad black ribbon, and in his bosom a buckle 
studded with glass; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist; 
he wore by his side a sword with a black hilt ; and his stockings 
of silk, though newly washed, were grown yellow by long service, 
I was so much engaged with the peculiarity of his dress that I 
attended only to the latter part of my friend's reply, in which 
he complimented Mr. Tibbs on the taste of his clothes and the 
bloom in his countenance, 

"Pshaw, pshaw, Will," cried the figure, "no more of that, if 
you love me. You know I hate flattery, — on my soul I do ; and 
yet, to be sure, an intimacy with the great will improve one's 
appearance, and a course of venison will fatten. And yet, 
faith, I despise the great as much as you do; but there are a 
great many damned honest fellows among them, and we must 
not quarrel with one half, because the other wants breeding. If 
they were all such as my Lord Mudler, one of the most good- 
natured creatures that ever squeezed a lemon, I should myself 
be among the number of their admirers. I was yesterday to 
dine at the Duchess of Piccadilly's. My lord was there. 'Ned,' 
says he to me, — ' Ned,' says he, ' I '11 hold gold to silver I can tell 
you where you were poaching last night.' 'Poaching, my lord? ' 
says I; 'faith, you have missed already; for I stayed at home, 
and let the girls poach for me. That's my way; I take a fine 



454 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

woman as some animals do their prey — stand still, and, swoop, 
they fall into my mouth.' " 

"Ah, Tibbs, thou art a happy fellow," cried my companion, 
with looks of infinite pity. "I hope your fortune is as much 
improved as your understanding in such company? " 

" Improved! " rephed the other. " You shall know — but let 
it go no farther — ■ a great secret — five hundred a year to begin 
with — my lord's word of honor for it. His lordship took me 
down in his own chariot yesterday, and we had a tete-d-tete din- 
ner in the country, where we talked of nothing else." 

"I fancy you forget, sir," cried I, "you told us but this mo- 
ment of your dining yesterday in town." 

" Did I say so? " repHed he coolly. " To be sure, if I said so, 
it was so. Dined in town! Egad, now I do remember — I did 
dine in town; but I dined in the country too; for you must 
know, my boys, I eat two dinners. By the by, I am grown as 
nice ^ as the devil in my eating. I '11 tell you a pleasant affair 
about that. We were a select party of us to dine at Lady 
Grogram's, — an affected piece, but let it go no farther — a 
secret. Well, there happened to be no asafcetida in the sauce to 
a turkey, upon wliich, says I, ' I '11 hold a thousand guineas, and 
say done first, that' — But, dear Drybone, you are an honest 
creature; lend me half a crown for a minute or two, or so, just 
till — But harkee, ask me for it the next time we meet, or it 
may be twenty to one but I forget to pay you." 

When he left us, our conversation naturally turned upon so 
extraordinary a character. "His very dress," cries my friend, 
"is not less extraordinary than his conduct. If you meet him 
this day, you will find him in rags; if the next, in embroidery. 
With those persons of distinction of whom he talks so famil- 
iarly, he has scarce a coffee-house acquaintance. However, both 
for the interests of society, and perhaps for his own, Heaven has 
made him poor; and while all the world perceive his wants, he 
fancies them concealed from every eye. An agreeable compan- 
ion, because he understands flattery; and all must be pleased 
with the first part of his conversation, though all are sure of its 
ending with a demand on their purse. While his youth counte- 
nances the levity of his conduct, he may thus earn a precarious 
subsistence; but when age comes on, the gravity of which is 

^ Fastidious. 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 455 

incompatible with buffoonery, then will he find himself for- 
saken by all ; condemned in the decline of life to hang upon some 
rich family whom he once despised, there to undergo all the 
ingenuity of studied contempt, to be employed only as a spy 
upon the servants, or a bugbear to fright the children into 
obedience." — Adieu. 

LETTER LV 

I am apt to fancy I have contracted a new acquaintance 
whom it will be no easy matter to shake off. My little beau 
yesterday overtook me again in one of the public walks, and, 
slapping me on the shoulder, saluted me with an air of the most 
perfect famiUarity. His dress was the same as usual, except 
that he had more powder in his hair, wore a dirtier shirt, a pair 
of temple spectacles, and his hat under his arm. 

As I knew him to be a harmless, amusing little thing, I could 
not return his smiles with any degree of severity; so we walked 
forward on terms of the utmost intimacy, and in a few minutes 
discussed all the usual topics preUminary to particular conver- 
sation. The oddities that marked his character, however, soon 
began to appear; he bowed to several well-dressed persons, 
who, by their manner of returning the compliment, appeared 
perfect strangers. At intervals he drew out a pocket-book, 
seeming to take memorandums, before all the company, with 
much importance and assiduity. In this manner he led me 
through the length of the whole walk, fretting at his absurdi- 
ties, and fancying myself laughed at not less than him by every 
spectator. 

When we were got to the end of our procession, "Blast me," 
cries he, with an air of vivacity, " I never saw the Park so thin 
in my life before! There's no company at all to-day; not a 
single face to be seen." 

"No company!" interrupted I peevishly; "no company, 
where there is such a crowd? Why, man, there's too much. 
What are the thousand that have been laughing at us but 
company? " 

" Lord, my dear," returned he, with the utmost good-humor, 
"you seem immensely chagrined; but, blast me, when the 
world laughs at me, I laugh at the world, and so we are even. 
My Lord Trip, Bill Squash the Creolian, and I, sometimes 



456 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

make a party at being ridiculous; and so we say and do a thou- 
sand things for the joke's sake. But I see you are grave, and if 
you are for a fine grave sentimental companion, you shall dine 
with me and my wife to-day; I must insist on 't. I '11 introduce 
you to Mrs. Tibbs, a lady of as elegant qualifications as any in 
nature; she was bred, but that's between ourselves, under the 
inspection of the Countess of All-night. A charming body of 
voice; but no more of that — she shall give us a song. You shall 
see my little girl too, Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Tibbs, a 
sweet pretty creature ! I design her for my Lord Drumstick's 
eldest son; but that 's in friendship — let it go no farther; she 's 
but six years old, and yet she walks a minuet, and plays on the 
guitar immensely already. I intend she shall be as perfect as 
possible in every accomplishment. In the first place, I '11 make 
her a scholar; I'll teach her Greek myself, and learn that lan- 
guage purposely to instruct her; but let that be a secret." 

Thus saying, without waiting for a reply, he took me by the 
arm, and hauled me along. We passed through many dark 
alleys and winding ways; for, from some motives to me un- 
known, he seemed to have a particular aversion to every fre- 
quented street; at last, however, we got to the door of a dismal- 
looking house in the outlets of the town, where he informed 
me he chose to reside for the benefit of the air. 

We entered the lower door, which ever seemed to lie most 
hospitably open, and I began to ascend an old and creaking 
staircase, when, as he mounted to show me the way, he de- 
manded whether I delighted in prospects; to which answering 
in the affirmative, "Then," says he, " I shall show you one of 
the most charming in the world, out of my windows; we shall 
see the ships saihng, and the whole country for twenty miles 
round, tip-top, quite high. My Lord Swamp would give ten ■ 
thousand guineas for such a one; but, as I sometimes pleasantly 
tell him, I always love to keep my prospects at home, that my 
friends may come to see me the oftener." 

By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would per- 
mit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously 
pleased to call the first floor down the chimney; and knocking 
at the door, a voice from within demanded, "Who's there?" 
My conductor answered that it was him. But this not satisfy- 
ing the querist; the voice again repeated the demand ; to which 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 457 

he answered louder than before ; and now the door was opened 
by an old woman with cautious reluctance. 

When we were got in, he welcomed me to his house with great 
ceremony, and, turning to the old woman, asked where was her 
lady? " Good troth," replied she, in a pecuhar dialect, "she's 
washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they have 
taken an oath against lending out the tub any longer." 

" My two shirts!" cries he, in a tone that faltered with con- 
fusion. '' What does the idiot mean? " 

" I ken what I mean weel enough," replied the other. " She 's 
washing your twa shirts at the next door, because — " 

" Fire and fury! no more of thy stupid explanations ! " cried 
he. " Go and inform her we have got company. Were that 
Scotch hag," continued he, turning to me, " to be forever in 
my family, she would never learn politeness, nor forget that 
absurd poisonous accent of hers, or testify the smallest speci- 
men of breeding or high hfe; and yet it is very surprising too, 
as I had her from a parliament man, a friend of mine from the 
Highlands, one of the poHtest men in the world; but that's a 
secret." 

We waited some time for Mrs. Tibbs's arrival, during which 
interval I had a full opportunity of surveying the chamber and 
all its furniture, which consisted of four chairs with old wrought 
bottoms, that he assured me were his wife's embroidery; a 
square table that had been once japanned; a cradle in one 
corner, a lumbering cabinet in the other; a broken shepherdess, 
and a mandarin without a head, were stuck over the chimney; 
and round the walls several paltry unframed pictures, which, 
he observed, were all his own drawing. 

" What do you think, sir, of that head in the corner, done in 
the manner of Grisoni? There 's the true keeping in it; it 's my 
own face, and though there happens to be no likeness, a count- 
ess offered me an hundred for its fellow. I refused her, for, 
hang it! that would be mechanical, you know." 

The wife at last made her appearance, at once a slattern and 
a coquette; much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of 
beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such an 
odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as she had stayed 
all night at the Gardens with the Countess, who was excessively 
fond of the horns. 



458 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

" And indeed, my dear," added she, turning to her husband, 
" his lordship drank your health in a bumper." 

"Poor Jack!" cries he; "a dear good-natured creature; I 
know he loves me. But I hope, my dear, you have given orders 
for dinner. You need make no great preparations neither, — 
there are but three of us; something elegant and little will do, 

— a turbot, an ortolan, or a — " 

" Or what do you think, my dear," interrupts the wife, " of a 
nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping hot, and dressed with a Httle 
of my own sauce? " 

"The very thing!" replies he. "It will eat best with some 
smart bottled beer; but be sure to let us have the sauce his 
Grace was so fond of. I hate your immense loads of meat; that 
is country all over; extreme disgusting to those who are in the 
least acquainted with high life." 
^ By this time my curiosity began to abate, and my appetite to 
increase. The company of fools may at first make us smile, but 
at last never fails of rendering us melancholy. I therefore pre- 
tended to recollect a prior engagement, and, after having shown 
my respect to the house, according to the fashion of the Eng- 
lish, by giving the old servant a piece of money at the door, I 
took my leave; Mrs. Tibbs assuring me that dinner, if I stayed, 
would be ready at least in less than two hours. 

- Vc^wcT. LETTER XCVIII 

I had some intentions lately of going to visit Bedlam, the 
place where those who go mad are confined. I went to wait 
upon the Man in Black to be my conductor, but I found him 
preparing to go to Westminster Hall, where the English hold 
their courts of justice. It gave me some surprise to find my 
friend engaged in a lawsuit, but more so when he informed me 
that it had been depending for several years. 

" How is it possible," cried I, " for a man who knows the 
world to go to law? I am well acquainted with the courts of 
justice in China; they resemble rat-traps, every one of them, — 
nothing more easy than to get in, but to get out again is at- 
tended with some difficulty, and more cunning than rats are 
generally found to possess." 

"Faith," replied my friend, "I should not have gone to law 
but that I was assured of success before I began. Things were 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 459 

presented to me in so alluring a light that I thought by barely 
declaring myself a candidate for the prize I had nothing more to 
do than to enjoy the fruits of the victory. Thus have I been 
upon the eve of an imaginary triumph every term these ten 
years ; have traveled forward with victory ever in my view, but 
ever out of reach. However, at present I fancy we have ham- 
pered our antagonist in such a manner that, without some un- 
foreseen demur, we shall this day lay him fairly on his back." 

"If things be so situated," said I, "I don't care if I attend 
you to the courts, and partake in the pleasure of your success. 
But prithee," continued I, as we set forward, "what reasons 
have you to think an affair at last concluded, which has given 
you so many former disappointments?" 

"My lawyer tells me," returned he, " that I have Salkeld and 
Ventris strong in my favor, and that there are no less than fif- 
teen cases in point." 

"I understand," said I. "Those are two of your judges who 
have already declared their opinions." 
K "Pardon me," replied my friend, "Salkeld and Ventris are 
lawyers who some hundred years ago gave their opinions on 
cases similar to mine. These opinions which make for me, my 
lawyer is to cite; and those opinions which look another way 
are cited by the lawyer employed by my antagonist. As I ob- 
served, I have Salkeld and Ventris for me ; he has Coke and Hale 
for him ; and he that has most opinions is most likely to carry 
his cause." 
N. "But where is the necessity," cried I, " of ^prolonging a suit 
by citing the opinions and reports of others, since the same good 
sense which determined lawyers in former ages may serve to 
guide your judges at this day? They at that time gave their 
opfnions only from the light of reason; your judges have the 
same light at present to direct them; — let me even add, a 
greater, as in former ages there were many prejudices from 
which the present is happily free. If arguing from authorities 
be exploded from every other branch of learning, why should it 
be particularly adhered to in this? I plainly foresee how such a 
method of investigation must embarrass every suit, and even 
perplex the student. Ceremonies will be multiplied, formalities 
must increase, and more time will thus be spent in learning the 
arts of htigation than in the discovery of right." 



46o OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

"I see," cries my friend, "that you are for a speedy adminis- 
tration of justice; but all the world will grant that the more 
time that is taken up in considering any subject, the better it 
will be understood. Besides, it is the boast of an Englishman 
that his property is secure, and all the world will grant that a 
deliberate administration of justice is the best way to secure his 
property. Why have we so many lawyers, but to secure our 
property? Why so many formalities, but to secure our pro- 
perty? Not less than one hundred thousand families hve in 
opulence, elegance, and ease, merely by securing our prop- 
erty." 

"To embarrass justice," returned I, "by a multipHcity of 
laws, or to hazard it by a confidence in our judges, are, I grant, 
the opposite rocks on which legislative wisdom has ever split. 
In one case, the client resembles that emperor who is said to 
have been suffocated with the bedclothes which were only de- 
signed to keep him warm ; in the other, to that town which let 
the enemy take possession of its walls, in order to show the 
world how little they depended upon aught but courage for 
safety. But bless me! what numbers do I see here, all in black 
— How is it possible that half this multitude find employ- 
ment?" 

"Nothing so easily conceived," returned my companion. 
"They live by watching each other. For instance, the catch- 
pole watches^he man in debt, the attorney watches the catch- 
pole, the counselor watches the attorney, the solicitor the coun- 
selor, and all find sufficient employment." 

"I conceive you," interrupted I. "They watch each other, 
but it is the chent that pays them all for watching. It puts me 
in mind of a Chinese fable, which is entitled ' Five Animals at 
a Meal.' A grasshopper, filled with dew, was merrily singing 
under a shade. A whangam, that eats grasshoppers, had 
marked it for its prey, and was just stretching forth to devour 
it. A serpent, that had for a long time fed only on whangams, 
was coiled up to fasten on the whangam. A yellow bird was 
just upon the wing to dart upon the serpent. A hawk had just 
stooped from above to seize the yellow bird. All were intent on 
their prey, and unmindful of their danger; so the whangam ate 
the grasshopper, the serpent ate the whangam, the yellow bird 
the serpent, and the hawk the yellow bird; when, sousing from 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 461 

on high, a vulture gobbled up the hawk, grasshopper, whangam 
and all, in a moment." 

- I had scarce finished my fable, when the lawyer came to 
inform my friend that his cause was put off till another term, 
that money was wanted to retain, and that all the world was 
of opinion that the very next hearing would bring him off vic- 
torious. "If so, then," cries my friend, "I beheve it will be my 
wisest way to continue the cause for another term ; and in the 
meantime my friend here and I will go and see Bedlam." — Ji/' 

Adieu. ^ 



RICHARD KURD 

LETTERS ON CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE 
1762 

[These letters form one of the landmarks of the " romantic movement," 
in their daring defense of Gothic or mediaeval art. The substance of them 
may well be compared with certain parts of Warton's Spenser (see page 
332, above), and with CoUins's Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands. 
The extracts that follow are from Letters i, vi, and xii.] 

The ages we call barbarous present us with many a subject 
of curious speculation. What, for instance, is more remarkable 
than the Gothic Chivalry ? or than the spirit of Romance, which 
took its rise from that singular institution? 

Nothing in human nature, my dear friend, is without its rea- 
sons. The modes and fashions of different times may appear, 
at first sight, fantastic and unaccountable. But they who look 
nearly into them discover some latent cause of their produc- 
tion. 

Nature once known, no prodigies remain — 

as sings our philosophical bard; but to come at this knowledge 
is the difficulty. Sometimes a close attention to the workings of 
the human mind is sufficient to lead us to it; sometimes more 
than that, the dihgent observation of what passes without us, is 
necessary. This last I take to be the case here. The prodigies 
we are now contemplating had their origin in the barbarous ages. 
Why then, says the fastidious modern, look any farther for the 
reason? Why not resolve them at once into the usual caprice 
and absurdity of barbarians? This, you see, is a short and com- 
modious philosophy. Yet barbarians have their own, such as it 
is, if they are not enlightened by our reason. Shall we then con- 
demn them unheard, or will it not be fair to let them have the 
telling of their own story ? 

Would we know from what causes the institution of Chivalry 
was derived ? The time of its birth, the situation of the barba- 
rians amongst whom it arose, must be considered ; their wants, 



CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE 463 

designs, and policies must be explored. We must inquire when, 
and where, and how it came to pass that the western world 
became familiarized to this prodigy, which we now start at. 

Another thing is full as remarkable, and concerns us more 
nearly. The spirit of Chivalry was a fire which soon spent 
itself; but that of Romance, which was kindled at it, burnt 
long, and continued its light and heat even to the politer ages. 
The greatest geniuses of our own and foreign countries, such as 
Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, and Spenser and Milton in England, 
were seduced by these barbarities of their forefathers; were even 
charmed by the Gothic romances. Was this caprice and ab- 
surdity in them ? Or may there not be something in the Gothic 
romance peculiarly suited to the views of a genius and to the 
ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic moderns have 
gone too far, in their perpetual ridicule and contempt of it? 

To form a judgment in the case, the rise, progress, and genius 
of Gothic Chivalry must be explained. The circumstances in 
the Gothic fictions and manners, which are proper to the ends 
of poetry (if any such there be) must be pointed out. Rea- 
sons for the decline and rejection of the Gothic taste in later 
times must be given. 

You have in these particulars both the subject and the plan 
of the following Letters. 

Let it be no surprise to you that, in the close of my last Let- 
ter, I presumed to bring the Gierusalemme Liberata into compe- 
tition with the Iliad. So far as the heroic and Gothic manners 
are the same, the pictures of each, if well taken, must be equally 
entertaining. But I go further, and maintain that the circum- 
stances in which they differ are clearly to the advantage of the 
Gothic designers. 

You see my purpose is to lead you from this forgotten chiv- 
alry to a more amusing subject: I mean the poetry we still read, 
and which was founded upon it. Much has been said, and with 
great truth, of the felicity of Homer's age for poetical manners. 
But, as Homer was a citizen of the world, when he had seen in 
Greece, on the one hand, the manners he has described, could 
he, on the other hand, have seen in the West the manners of the 
feudal ages, I make no doubt but he would certainly have pre- 
ferred the latter. And the grounds of this preference would, I 



464 RICHARD KURD 

suppose, have been the improved gallantry of the feudal times, and 
the superior solemnity of their superstitions. 

If any great poet, like Homer, had lived amongst, and sung 
of, the Gothic knights (for after all Spenser and Tasso came too 
late, and it was impossible for them to paint truly and perfectly 
what was no longer seen or believed), this preference, I per- 
suade myself, had been very sensible. But their fortune was 

not so happy. 

Omnes illacrymabiles 
Urgentur, ignotique longa 
Node, carent quia vale sacro.^ 

As it is, we may take a guess of what the subject was capable of 
affording to real genius from the rude sketches we have of it in 
the old romancers. And it is but looking into any of them to be 
convinced that the gallantry which inspirited the feudal times 
was of a nature to furnish the poet with finer scenes and sub- 
jects of description, in every view, than the simple and uncon- 
trolled barbarity of the Grecian, The principal entertainment 
arising from the delineation of these, consists in the exercise of 
the boisterous passions, which are provoked and kept alive 
from one end of the Iliad to the other, by every imaginable 
scene of rage, revenge, and slaughter. In the other, together 
with these, the gentler and more humane affections are awak- 
ened in us by the most interesting displays of love and friend- 
ship; of love elevated to its noblest heights, and of friendship 
operating on the purest motives. The mere variety of these 
paintings is a reUef to the reader as well as writer. But their 
beauty, novelty, and pathos give them avast advantage, on the 
comparison. 

Consider, withal, the surprises, accidents, adventures which 
probably and naturally attend on the life of wandering knights; 
the occasion there must be for describing the wonders of differ- 
ent countries, and of presenting to view the manners and poli- 
cies of distant states, — all which make so conspicuous a part of 
the materials of the greater poetry. So that, on the whole, 
though the spirit, passions, rapine, and violence of the two sets 
of manners were equal, yet there was a dignity, a magnificence, 
a variety in the feudal, which the other wanted. 

As to religious machinery, perhaps the popular system of 

> " [Many brave men lived before Agamemnon, but] they are all oppressed, unwept and 
unknown, in endless night, because they lack a sacred bard (to praise them)." 



CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE 465 

each was equally remote from reason, yet the latter had some- 
thing in it more amusing, as well as more awakening to the im- 
agination. The current popular tales of elves and fairies were 
even fitter to take the credulous mind, and charm it into a will- 
ing admiration of the specious miracles which wayward fancy 
dehghts in, than those of the old traditionary rabble of pagan 
divinities. And then, for the more solemn fancies of witch- 
craft and incantation, the horrors of the Gothic were above 
measure striking and terrible. The mummeries of the pagan 
priests were childish, but the Gothic enchanters shook and 
alarmed all nature. 

We feel this difference very sensibly, in reading the ancient 
and modern poets. You would not compare the Canidia of 
Horace with the Witches of Macbeth. And what are Virgil's 
myrtles dropping blood, to Tasso's enchanted forest? . . . 

Without more words you will readily apprehend that the 
fancies of our modern bards are not only more gallant, but, on 
a change of the scene, more sublime, more terrible, more alarm- 
ing, than those of the classic fablers. In a word, you will find 
that the manners they paint, and the superstitions they adopt, 
are the more poetical for being Gothic. 

... At length the magic of the old romances was perfectly 
dissolved. They began with reflecting an image, indeed, of 
the feudal manners, but an image. magnified and distorted by 
unskillful designers. Common sense being offended with these 
perversions of truth and nature (still accounted the more mon- 
strous, as the ancient manners they pretended to copy after 
were now disused, and of most men forgotten), the next step was 
to have recourse to allegories. Under this disguise they walked 
the world a while, the excellence of the moral and the ingenuity 
of the contrivance making some amends, and being accepted 
as a sort of apology, for the absurdity of the literal story. 

Under this form the tales of fairy kept their ground, and 
even made their fortune at court, where they became, for two 
or three reigns, the ordinary entertainment of our princes. But 
reason in the end (assisted, however, by party and religious pre- 
judices) drove them off the scene, and would endure these lying 
wonders neither in their own proper shape nor as masked in 
figures. 



466 RICHARD HURD 

Henceforth the taste of wit and poetry took a new turn, and 
fancy, that had wantoned it so long in the world of fiction, was 
now constrained, against her will, to ally herself with strict 
truth, if she would gain admittance into reasonable company. 

What we have gotten by this revolution, you will say, is a 
great deal of good sense. What we have lost is a world of fine 
fabling, the illusion of which is so grateful to the charmed spirit 
that, in spite of philosophy and fashion. Fairy Spenser still 
ranks highest among the poets, — I mean with all those who 
are either come of that house, or have any kindness for it. . . . 



HORACE WALPOLE 

(fourth earl of orford) 

LETTERS 

[Walpole's letters cover a very long period, and form the most numer- 
ous of the collections of this letter-loving century. The largest number 
of them were addressed to his friends George Montagu, Sir Horace Mann, 
and Henry Conway. Those to Mann came back into Walpole's posses- 
sion, and he edited them and bequeathed them to a friend, the son of 
Lady Waldegrave, to be opened when he should reach the age of 25. This 
occurred in iSro, and the letters were published in 1833. Meantime a por- 
tion of his correspondence had been published in 1798, in the year follow- 
ing his death, and other collections have appeared at intervals up to 1905. 
The edition made by Cunningham (1857-59) includes 2665 letters, and 
the latest (by Mrs. Paget Toynbee) adds many more.] 

TO SIR HORACE MANN 

Windsor, August 21, 1746. 

... I CAME from town(for take notice, I put this place upon 
myself for the country) the day after the execution of the rebel 
lords. ^ I was not at it, but had two persons come to me directly 
who were at the next house to the scaffold, and I saw another 
who was upon it; so that you may depend upon my accounts. 

Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord Balmerino 
drank a bumper to King James's health. As the clock struck 
ten, they came forth on foot, Lord Kilmarnock all in black, his 
hair unpowdered in a bag, supported by Forster, the great 
Presbyterian, and by Mr. Home, a young clergyman, his friend. 
Lord Balmerino followed, alone, in a blue coat, turned up with 
red (his rebellious regimentals), a flannel waistcoat, and his 
shroud beneath; their hearses following. They were conducted 
to a house near the scaffold; the room forwards had benches for 
spectators, in the second Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in the 
third backwards Lord Balmerino; all three chambers hung with 
black. Here they parted. Balmerino embraced the other, and 
said, "My lord, I wish I could suffer for both I" He had scarce 
left him, before he desired again to see him, and then asked 

I Jacobites, captured and brought to trial after the Battle of Culloden. ■ 



468 HORACE WALPOLE 

him, "My Lord Kilmarnock, do you know anything of the reso- 
lution taken in our army, the day before the battle of Culloden, 
to put the English prisoners to death? " He replied, "My lord, 
I was not present; but since I came hither, I have had all the 
reason to believe that there was such order taken; and I hear 
the Duke has the pocket-book with the order." Balmerino an- 
swered, "It was a lie raised to excuse their barbarity to us." 
Take notice, that the Duke's charging this on Lord Kilmarnock 
(certainly on misinformation) decided this unhappy man's 
fate! ... At last he came to the scaffold, certainly much terri- 
fied, but with a resolution that prevented his behaving in the 
least meanly or unlike a gentleman. He took no notice of the 
crowd, only to desire that the baize might be lifted up from the 
rails, that the mob might see the spectacle. He stood and 
prayed some time with Forster, who wept over him, exhorted 
and encouraged him. He delivered a long speech to the Sheriff, 
and with a noble manliness stuck to the recantation he had 
made at his trial, declaring he wished that all who embarked 
in the same cause might meet the same fate. He then took off 
his bag, coat, and waistcoat, with great composure, and after 
some trouble put on a napkin-cap, and then several times tried 
the block; the executioner, who was in white, with a white 
apron, out of tenderness concealing the axe behind himself. 
At last the Earl knelt down, with a visible unwiUingness to 
depart, and after five minutes dropped his handkerchief, the 
signal, and his head was cut off at once, only hanging by a bit 
of skin, and was received in a scarlet cloth by four of the under- 
taker's men kneeling, who wrapped it up and put it into the 
coffin with the body, — orders having been given not to expose 
the heads, as used to be the custom. 

The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with sawdust, 
the block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new 
axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air 
of a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the 
inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards. He then 
surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even 
upon masts of ships in the river; and, pulling out his spectacles, 
read a treasonable speech, which he delivered to the Sheriff, 
and said the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince that flesh 
and blood could not resist following him; and, lying down to 



1 



LETTERS 469 

try the block, he said, "If I had a thousand lives, I would lay 
them all down here in the same cause." He said, if he had not 
taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked 
down Williamson, the lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill usage 
of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman 
how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock, and gave him 
three guineas. Two clergymen who attended him coming up, 
he said, "No, gentlemen, I beheve you have already done me 
all the service you can." Then he went to the corner of the 
scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to give him his 
periwig, which he took off, and put on a night-cap of Scotch 
plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; 
but, being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and 
immediately gave the signal by tossing up his arm, as if he were 
giving the signal for battle. He received three blows, but the 
first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of 
an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. 
Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but 
with the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison 
to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with 
spectators, he cried out, "Look, look! how they are all piled up 
like rotten oranges!" . . . 

TO HON. H. S. CONWAY 

Twickenham, June 8, 1747. 
You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, 
and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house ^ 
that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest 
bauble you ever saw. It is set in enameled meadows, with fili- 
gree hedges : — 

A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, 
And little finches wave their wings in gold. 

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me 
continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as 
Barons of the Exchequer move under my window; Richmond 
Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect; but thank God! the 
Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowa- 
gers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's 
ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most po- 

1 The nucleus of "Strawberry Castle." 



470 HORACE WALPOLE 

etical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a 
farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each 
kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was 
after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Che- 
venixes had tricked it out for themselves; up two pair of stairs 
is what they call Mr. Chevenix's library, furnished with three 
maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame tele- 
scope without any glasses. . . . 

I could tell you much election news, — none else; though not 
being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject as, to be 
sure, one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give 
you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, 
or name the returning officer instead of the candidate. In gen- 
eral, I believe, it is much as usual, — those sold in detail that 
afterwards will be sold in the representation, — the ministers 
bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own, — the name of 
well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbid- 
ding ministers that they may make the better market of their 
own patriotism. In short, all England, under some name or 
other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we 
become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for 
wisdom and virtue. My great-great-grandchildren will figure 
me with a white beard down to my girdle, and Mr. Pitt's will 
believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hun- 
dred hot ploughshares without hurting the sole of his foot. 
How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself 
quoted as a person of consummate prudence! 

TO SIR HORACE MANN 

Arlington Street, May 17, 1749. 
. . . The graver part of the world, who have not been quite 
so much given up to rockets and masquing, are amused with a 
book of Lord BoHngbroke's, just published, but written long 
ago. It is composed of three letters, the first to Lord Cornbury 
on the Spirit of Patriotism, and two others to Mr. Lyttelton 
(but with neither of their names) on the Idea of a Patriot King, 
and the State of Parties on the late King's accession. . . . 
But there is a Preface to this famous book, which makes much 
more noise than the work itself. It seems Lord Bolingbroke had 
originally trusted Pope with the copy, to have half a dozen 



LETTERS 471 

printed for particular friends. Pope, who loved money infin- 
itely beyond any friend, got fifteen hundred copies printed pri- 
vately, intending to outhve Bolingbroke and make great ad- 
vantage of them; and not only did this, but altered the copy 
at his pleasure, and even made different alterations in different 
copies. Where Lord Bolingbroke had strongly flattered their 
common friend Lyttelton, Pope suppressed the panegyric; 
where, in compliment to Pope, he had softened the satire on 
Pope's great friend. Lord Oxford, Pope reinstated the abuse. 
The first part of this transaction is recorded in the Preface; the 
two latter facts are reported by Lord Chesterfield and Lyttel- 
ton, the latter of whom went to Bolingbroke to ask how he had 
forfeited his good opinion. In short, it is comfortable to us 
people of moderate virtue to hear these demigods, and patriots, 
and philosophers, inform the world of each other's villainies. 

Strawberry Hill, June 4, 1749. 

• . . . Inmy last I told you some curious anecdotes of another 
part of the band, of Pope and Bolingbroke. The friends of the 
former have published twenty pamphlets against the latter; I 
say against the latter, for, as there is no defending Pope, they 
are reduced to satirize Bolingbroke. One of them tells him how 
little he would be known himself from his own writings, if he 
were not immortalized in Pope's; and, still more justly, that if 
he destroys Pope's moral character, what will become of his 
own, which has been retrieved and sanctified by the embalming 
art of his friend ? However, there are still new discoveries made 
every day of Pope's dirty selfishness. Not content with the 
great profits which he proposed to make of the work in ques- 
tion, he could not bear that the interest of his money should be 
lost till Bolingbroke's death, and therefore told him that it 
would cost very near as much to have the press set for half a 
dozen copies as it would for a complete edition, and by this 
means made Lord Bohngbroke pay very near the whole expense 
of the fifteen hundred. Another story I have been told on this 
occasion was of a gentleman who, making a visit to Bishop 
Atterbury in France, thought to make his court by commending 
Pope. The Bishop replied not; the gentleman doubled the dose; 
at last the Bishop shook his head, and said, "Mens curva in cor- 
pore curvol " The world will now think justly of these men ; that 



472 HORACE WALPOLE 

Pope was the greatest poet, but not the most disinterested man 
in the world, and that Bolingbroke had not all those virtues and 
not all those talents which the other so proclaimed ; and that he 
did not even deserve the friendship which lent him so much 
merit; and for the mere loan of which he dissembled attach- 
ment to Pope, to whom in his heart he was as perfidious and 
as false as he has been to the rest of the world. . . . 

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE 

Strawberry Hill, April 4, 1760. 
... At present nothing is talked of, nothing admired, but 
what I cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious perfor- 
mance. It is a kind of novel, called The Life and Opinions of 
Tristram Shandy, the great humor of which consists in the whole 
narration always going backwards. I can conceive a man saying 
that it would be droll to write a book in that manner, but have 
no notion of his persevering in executing it. It makes one smile 
two or three times at the beginning, but in recompense makes 
me yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably kept up, 
but the humor is forever attempted and missed. The best thing 
in it is a sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of bawdy, and 
both the composition of a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, 
was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success and 
fame. Dodsley has given him 650 pounds for the second edition 
and two more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to 
his great-great-grandfather) ; Lord Fauconberg, a donative of 
160 pounds a year; and Bishop Warburton gave him a purse of 
gold and this compliment (which happened to be a contradic- 
tion), " that it was quite an original composition, and in the 
true Cervantic vein," — the only copy that ever was an origi- 
nal, except in painting, where they all pretend to be so. Warbur- 
ton, however, not content with this, recommended the book to 
the bench of Bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author, was 
the English Rabelais. They had never heard of such a writer. 

TO GEORGE MONTAGU 

Arlington Street, November 13, 1760. 
. . . Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying^ 
t'other night; I had never seen a royal funeral. Nay, I walked 

» Of George II. 



I 



LETTERS 473 

as a rag of quality, which I found would be — and so it was — 
the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The 
Prince's chamber, hung with purple and a quantity of silver 
lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast 
chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The 
Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that 
chamber. The procession, through a line of foot-guards, every 
seventh man bearing a torch, the horseguards Hning the outside, 
their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, 
the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolHng, and minute guns, — 
all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the 
Abbey, where we were received by the Dean and Chapter in 
rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole 
Abbey so illuminated, that one saw it to greater advantage than 
by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing 
distinctly, and with the happiest chiaro scuro. There wanted 
nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with 
priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could 
not complain of its not being Catholic enough. . . . When we 
came to the chapel of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and 
decorum ceased. No order was observed, people sat or stood 
where they could or would ; the yeomen of the guard were crying 
out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin. 
The Bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers; the fine 
chapter, " Man that is born of woman," was chanted, not read, 
and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would 
have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the 
figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand 
melancholy circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, and 
a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards. Attending the 
funeral of a father could not be pleasant; his leg extremely bad, 
yet forced to stand upon it near two hours ; his face bloated and 
distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, 
one of his eyes; and placed over the mouth of the vault, into 
which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; — 
think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a firm 
and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully con- 
trasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit 
of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung him- 
self back in a stall, the Archbishop hovering over him with a 



474 HORACE WALPOLE 

smelling-bottle. But in two minutes his curiosity got the bet- 
ter of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass 
to spy who was or was not there, spying with one hand, and 
mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of 
catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking 
with heat, felt himself weighed down, and, turning round, found 
it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train, to avoid 
the chill of the marble. ... 

TO REV. WILLIAM COLE 

Strawberry Hill, March 9, 1765. 
I had time to write but a short note with the Castle of 
Otranto, as your messenger called on me at four o'clock, as I was 
going to dine abroad. Your partiality to me and Strawberry 
have, I hope, inclined you to excuse the wildness of the story. 
You will even have found some traits to put you in mind of this 
place. When you read of the picture quitting its panel, ^ did not 
you recollect the portrait of Lord Falkland, all in white, in my 
gallery ? Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this 
romance ? I waked one morning, in the beginning of last June, 
from a dream, of which all I could recover was that I had 
thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a 
head filled, like mine, with Gothic story), and that on the 
uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand 
in armor. In the evening I sat down, and began to write, with- 
out knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The 
work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it; — add that I 
was very glad to think of anything rather than politics. In 
short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in 
less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time I 
had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till half an hour after one 
in the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary that I 
could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda 
and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph. You will 
laugh at my earnestness; but if I have amused you by retracing 
with any fidelity the manners of ancient days, I am content, and 
give you leave to think me as idle as you please. ... 

> See page 479, below. 



LETTERS 475 

TO JOHN CHUTE 

Bath, October lo, 1766. 

... My health advances faster than my amusement. How- 
ever, I have been at one opera, — Mr. Wesley's.^ They have boys 
and girls with charming voices, that sing hymns, in parts, to 
Scotch ballad tunes; but indeed so long that one would think 
they were already in eternity, and knew how much time they 
had before them. The chapel is very neat, with true Gothic win- 
dows (yet I am not converted) ; but I was glad to see that luxury 
is creeping in upon them before persecution: they have very neat 
mahogany stands for branches, and brackets of the same taste. 
At the upper end is abroad hautpasoi four steps, advancing in 
the middle ; at each end of the broadest par t are two eagles , with 
red cushions for the parson and clerk. Behind them rise three 
more steps, in the midst of which is a third eagle for pulpit. 
Scarlet armed chairs to all three. On either side, a balcony for 
elect ladies. The rest of the congregation sit on forms. Behind 
the pit, in a dark niche, is a plain table within rails; so you see 
the throne is for the apostle. Wesley is a lean elderly man, 
fresh-colored, his hair smoothly combed, but with a soupqon of 
curl at the ends. Wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as 
Garrick. He spoke his sermon, but so fast, and with so little 
accent, that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a 
lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it; but towards the 
end he exalted his voice, and acted very ugly enthusiasm; 
decried learning, and told stories. . . . 

TO SIR HORACE MANN 

Strawberry Hill, November 24, 1774. 
The old French Parliament is restored with great eclat. 
Monsieur de Maurepas, author of the revolution, was received 
one night at the Opera with boundless shouts of applause. It is 
even said that the mob intended, when the King should go to hold 
the lit de justice, to draw his coach. How singular it would be 
if Wilkes's case should be copied for a king of France ! Do you 
think Rousseau was in the right, when he said that he could tell 
what would be the manners of any capital city, from certain 
given lights? I don't know what he may do on Constantinople 
and Pekin — but Paris and London ! . , . For our part, I re- 

* That is, a Methodist meeting. 




476 HORACE WALPOLE 

peat it, we shall contribute nothing to the Histoire des Mceurs, 
not for want of materials, but for want of writers. We have 
comedies without novelty, gross satires without stings, meta- 
physical eloquence, and antiquarians that discover nothing. 

Boeotum in crasso jurares aere natos!^ 

Don't tell me I am grown old and peevish and supercilious, — 
name the geniuses of 1774, and I submit. The next Augustan 
age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, 
perhaps, be aThucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, 
and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At 
last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England, and 
give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions of 
Balbec and Palmyra. But am I not prophesying, contrary to my 
consummate prudence, and casting horoscopes of empires like 
Rousseau ? Yes; well, I will go and dream of my visions. 

THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO 
1764 

[On the origin of this "Gothic romance," see Walpole's letter to Rev. 
WilUam Cole, quoted on page 474, above. It was pubHshed as a transla- 
tion "from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto," — the original 
work, so the Preface stated, having been printed at Naples, in black letter, 
in 1529. Considerable interest and mystification followed, until, in a 
second edition, Walpole admitted the fiction, and explained his intention 
as being "to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the mod- 
ern."] 

. . . Young Conrad's birthday was fixed for his espousals. 
The company was assembled in the chapel of the Castle, and 
everything ready for beginning the divine office, when Conrad 
himself was missing. Manfred, impatient of the least delay, and 
who had not observed his son retire, despatched one of his at- 
tendants to summon the young Prince. The servant, who had 
not stayed long enough to have crossed the court to Conrad's 
apartment, came running back breathless, in a frantic manner, 
his eyes staring, and foaming at the mouth. He said nothing, 
but pointed to the court. 

The company were struck with terror and amazement. The 

' "You would swear they were born in the stupefying air of the Boeotians. " 



THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO 477 

Princess Hippolita, without knowing what was the matter, but 
anxious for her son, swooned away. Manfred, less apprehensive 
than enraged at the procrastination of the nuptials, and at the 
folly of his domestic, asked imperiously what was the matter? 
The fellow made no answer, but continued pointing towards the 
court-yard; and at last, after repeated questions put to him, 
cried out, "Oh! the hehnet! the helmet!" 

In the mean time, some of the company had run into the 
court, from whence was heard a confused noise of shrieks, hor- 
ror, and surprise. Manfred, who began to be alarmed at not 
seeing his son, went himself to get information of what occa- 
sioned this strange confusion. Matilda remained, endeavoring 
to assist her mother, and Isabella stayed for the same purpose, 
and to avoid showing any impatience for the bridegroom, — 
for whom, in truth, she had conceived little affection. 

The first thing that struck Manfred's eyes was a group of his 
servants endeavoring to raise something that appeared to him 
a mountain of sable plumes. He gazed without believing his 
sight. 

"What are ye doing?" cried Manfred wrathfully. "Where is 
my son?" 

A volley of voices replied, "Oh, my lord! the prince, the 
prince! The helmet, the helmet!" 

Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he 
knew not what, he advanced hastily, but — what a sight for 
a father's eyes! — he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and al- 
most buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more 
large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded 
with a proportionable quantity of black feathers. 

The horror of the spectacle, the ignorance of all around how 
this misfortune had happened, and, above all, the tremendous 
phenomenon before him, took away the Prince's speech. Yet 
his silence lasted longer than even grief could occasion. He 
fixed his eyes on what he wished in vain to believe a vision, and 
seemed less attentive to his loss than buried in meditation on the 
stupendous object that had occasioned it. He touched, he ex- 
amined the fatal casque; nor could even the bleeding, mangled 
remains of the young prince divert the eyes of Manfred from 
the portent before him. . . . 

While the ladies were conveying the wretched mother to her 



478 HORACE WALPOLE 

bed, Manfred remained in the court, gazing on the ominous 
casque, and regardless of the crowd which the strangeness of 
the event had no w assembled around him . The few words he ar- 
ticulated tended solely to inquiries whether any man knew from 
whence it could have come. Nobody could give him the least 
information. However, as it seemed to be the sole object of his 
curiosity, it soon became so to the rest of the spectators, whose 
conjectures were as absurd and improbable as the catastrophe 
itself was unprecedented. In the midst of their senseless 
guesses, a young peasant, whom rumor had drawn thither from 
a neighboring village, observed that the miraculous helmet was 
exactly like that on the figure in black marble of Alfonso the 
Good, one of their former princes, in the church of St. Nicholas. 

"Villain! what sayest thou?" cried Manfred, starting from 
his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by 
the collar. "How darest thou utter such treason? Thy Hfe 
shall pay for it." 

The spectators, who as httle comprehended the cause of the 
Prince's fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to un- 
ravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was 
still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the 
Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and 
humility, he disengaged himself from Manfred's grip, and 
then, with an obeisance which discovered more jealousy of in- 
nocence than dismay, he asked with respect of what he was 
guilty? Manfred, more enraged at the vigor, however decently 
exerted, with which the young man had shaken off his hold, 
than appeased by his submission, ordered his attendants to 
seize him, and, if he had not been withheld by his friends 
whom he had invited to the nuptials, would have poignarded 
the peasant in their arms. 

During this altercation, some of the vulgar spectators had 
run to the great church, which stood near the Castle, and came 
back open-mouthed, declaring that the helmet was missing 
from Alfonso's statue. 

^ [On the same evening Manfred declares to Isabella, who was to have 
been the bride of his son, his intention to divorce his wife HippoUta, and 
to wed her instead.] 

... At those words he seized the cold hand of Isabella, who 
was half dead with fright and horror. She shrieked, and started 



THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO 479 

from him. Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which 
was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented 
to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the 
height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a 
tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and 
rustling sound. Isabella, who gathered courage from her situa- 
tion, and who dreaded nothing so much as Manfred's pursuit 
of his declaration, cried: — 

"Look, my lord! See, Heaven itself declares against your 
impious intentions!" 

"Heaven nor hell shall impede my designs," said Manfred, 
. advancing again to seize the princess. 

At that instant the portrait of his grandfather, which hung 
over the bench where they had been sitting, uttered a deep 
sigh, and heaved its breast. Isabella, whose back was turned 
to the picture, saw not the motion, nor knew whence the sound 
came, but started, and said, "Hark, my lord! What sound 
was that? " and at the same time made towards the door. 

Manfred, distracted between the flight of Isabella, who had 
now reached the stairs, and yet unable to keep his eyes from 
the picture, which began to move, had, however, advanced 
some steps after her, still looking backwards on the portrait, 
when he saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a 
grave and melancholy air. 

"Do I dream?" cried Manfred, returning. "Or are the 
devils themselves in league against me? Speak, infernal 
spectre! Or, if thou art my grandsire, why dost thou too con- 
spire against thy wretched descendant, who too dearly pays 
for — " Ere he could finish the sentence, the vision sighed 
again, and made a sign to Manfred to follow him. 

"Lead on!" cried Manfred. "I will follow thee to the gulf 
of perdition." 

The spectre marched sedately, but dejected, to the end of 
the gallery, and turned into a chamber on the right hand. 
Manfred accompanied him at a little distance, full of anxiety 
and horror, but resolved. As he would have entered the cham- 
ber, the door was clapped to with violence by an invisible hand. 



\i 



LAURENCE STERNE 

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, 
GENTLEMAN 

1759-67 

[The first two volumes of this unique piece of fiction were pubhshed in 
1759, and at once made the author's reputation; others followed at inter- 
vals, the ninth and last in 1767. (See Walpole's comment on the work, 
page472, above.) Theextracts here printed are intended to represent both 
Sterne's type of humor, to which he gave the name "Shandyism," and the 
characteristic vein of sentiment which gives him a place in the so-called 
"sentimental movement." They are from Book III, chapter xii; Book 
VI, chapters xviii and xix; Book VII, chapters xxxi-xxxv; Book IX, 
chapter xxiv,] 

[the critic] 

... I 'll undertake tliis moment to prove it to any man in 
the world, except to a connoisseur: — tliougli I declare I object 
only to a connoisseur in swearing, — as I would do to a con- 
noisseur in painting, etc., etc., the whole set of 'em are so hung 
round and befetished with the bobs and trinkets of criticism, — 
or, to drop my metaphor, which by the by is a pity, for I have 
fetched it as far as from the coast of Guinea; — their heads, 
sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that 
eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a 
work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to 
be pricked and tortured to death by 'em. 

— "And how did Garrick speak the sohloquy last night?" 

*'0h, against all rule, my lord, — most ungrammatically! 
Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree 
together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus, — 
stopping, as if the point wanted settling; — and betwixt the 
nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the 
verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three 
seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my lord, each time." 

"Admirable grammarian! But in suspending his voice — 
was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of atti- 



TRISTRAM SHANDY 481 

tude or countenance fill up the chasm? Was the eye silent? 
Did you narrowly look?" 

"I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord." 

"Excellent observer!" 

"And what of this new book the whole world makes such a 
rout about?" 

"Oh, 't is out of all plumb, my lord, — quite an irregular 
thing! Not one of the angles at the four corners was a right 
angle. I had my rule and compasses, etc., my lord, in my 
pocket." 

"Excellent critic!" 

"And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at, — 
upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and 
trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 't is out, 
my lord, in every one of its dimensions." 

"Admirable connoisseur!" 

"And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in 
your way back?" 

" 'T is a melancholy daub, my lord! Not one principle of the 
pyramid in any one group ! And what a price ! — for there is 
nothing of the coloring of Titian — the expression of Rubens — 
the grace of Raphael — the purity of Domenichino — the cor- 
regiescity of Correggio — the learning of Poussin — the airs of 
Guido — the taste of the Carrachis — or the grand contour of 
Angelo!" 

Grant me patience, just heaven! Of all the cants which are 
canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may 
be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! I 
would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding 
on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give 
up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands, — be 
pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore. . . . 

[the breeching of tristram] 

"We should begin," said my father, turning himself half 
round in bed, and shifting his pillow a little towards my mo- 
ther's, as he opened the debate, — "We should begin to think, 
Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy into breeches." 

"We should so," said my mother. 

"We defer it, my dear," quoth my father, "shamefully." 



482 LAURENCE STERNE 

"I think we do, Mr. Shandy," said my mother. 

*'Not but the child looks extremely well," said my father, 
"in his vests and tunics." 

"He does look very well in them," replied my mother. 

"And for that reason it would be almost a sin," added my 
father, "to take him out of 'em." 

"It would so," said my mother. 

"But indeed he is growing a very tall lad," rejoined my father. 

"He is very tall for his age, indeed," said my mother. 

"I can not [making two syllables of it] imagine," quoth my 
father, "who the deuce he takes after." 

"I cannot conceive, for my hfe," said my mother. 

"Humph!" said my father. 

The dialogue ceased for a moment. 

"I am very short myself," continued my father gravely. 

"You are very short, Mr. Shandy," said my mother. 

"Humph!" quoth my father to himself, a second time; in 
muttering which, he plucked his pillow a httle further from my 
mother's, and turning about again, there was an end of the de- 
bate for three minutes and a half. 

"When he gets these breeches made," cried my father in a 
higher tone, "he'll look like a beast in 'em." 

"He will be very awkward in them at first," repHed my mo- 
ther. . . . 

"I am resolved, however," quoth my father, breaking silence 
the fourth time, "he shall have no pockets in them." 

"There is no occasion for any," said my mother. 

"I mean in his coat and waistcoat," cried my father. 

"I mean so too," replied my mother. 

"Though if he gets a gig or top — poor souls! it is a crown 
and a sceptre to them — they should have where to secure 
it." 

" Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy," repKed my mother. 

"But don't you think it right?" added my father, pressing 
the point home to her. 

"Perfectly," said my mother, "if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy." 

" There 's for you ! " cried my father, losing temper. "Pleases 
me! You never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever 
teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and point of 
convenience." 



TRISTRAM SHANDY 483 

This was on the Sunday night, and further this chapter say- 
eth not. 

After my father had debated the affair of the breeches with 
my mother, he consulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Al- 
bertus Rubenius used my father ten times worse in the consult- 
ation (if possible) than even my father had used my mother. 
For as Rubenius had wrote a quarto express, De re vestiaria 
veternm, it was Rubenius's business to have given my father 
some lights. On the contrary, my father might as well have 
thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long 
beard, as of extracting a single word out of Rubenius upon the 
subject. 

Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubenius was very 
communicative to my father ; — gave him a full and satisfac- 
tory account of — 

The Toga, or loose gown. 

The Chlamys. 

The Ephod. 

The Tunica, or Jacket. 

The Synthesis. 

The Paenula. 

The Lacerna, with its CucuUus. 

The Paludamentum. 

The PrcCtexta. 

The Sagum, or soldier's jerkin. 

The Trabea: of which, according to Suetonius, 
there were three kinds. 
"But what are all these to the breeches?" said my father. 
Rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes 
which had been in fashion with the Romans. There was — 

The open shoe. 

The close shoe. 

The slip shoe. 

The wooden shoe. 

The soc. 

The buskin. 
And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which 
Juvenal takes notice of. 
There were The clogs. 

The pattins. 



484 LAURENCE STERNE 

The pantoufles. 

The brogues. 

The sandals, with latchets to them. 
There was The felt shoe. 

The linen shoe. 

The laced shoe. 

The braided shoe. 

The calceus incisus. 
And The calceus rostratus. 
Rubenius showed my father how well they all fitted, — in 
what manner they laced on, — with what points, straps, 
thongs, latchets, ribbons, jags, and ends. 

"But I want to be informed about the breeches," said my 
father. 

Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans 
manufactured stuffs of various fabrics, — some plain, some 
striped, others diapered throughout the whole contexture of the 
wool with silk and gold; — that linen did not begin to be in 
common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the 
Egyptians, coming to settle amongst them, brought it into 
vogue. That persons of quality and fortune distinguished 
themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes, 
which color (next to purple, which was appropriated to the 
great offices) they most affected, and wore on their birthdays 
and public rejoicings. That it appeared from the best histo- 
rians of those times that they frequently sent their clothes to 
the fuller, to be cleaned and whitened; but that the inferior 
people, to avoid that expense, generally wore brown clothes, 
and of a something coarser texture, — till towards the begin- 
ning of Augustus's reign, when the slave dressed like his 
master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, 
but the latus clavus. 

"And what was the latus clavus?" said my father. 
Rubenius told him that the point was still Htigating amongst 
the learned; that Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bay- 
fius, Budaeus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and 
Joseph Scaliger all differed from each other, and he from them. 
That some took it to be the button, some the coat itself, — 
others only the color of it; — that the great Bayfius, in his 
Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12, honestly said he knew not 



TRISTRAM SHANDY 485 

what it was, — whether a tibula, a stud, a button, a loop, a 
buckle, or clasps and keepers. 

My father lost the horse, but not the saddle. "They are 
hooks and eyes," said my father. And with hooks and eyes he 
ordered my breeches to be made. 

[at Lyons] 

. . . Having called for my bill, as it was uncertain whether I 
should return to my inn, I had paid it, had moreover given the 
maid ten sous, and was just receiving the dernier compliments 
of Monsieur Le Blanc, for a pleasant voyage down the Rhone, 
when I was stopped at the gate. 

'T was by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of 
large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip- 
tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his two fore- 
feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet 
towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was 
to go in or no. 

Now 't is an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear 
to strike ; — there is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so 
unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily 
for him that it always disarms me, and to that degree that I do 
not like to speak unkindly to him. On the contrary, meet him 
where I will, — whether in town or country, in cart or under 
panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, — I have ever some- 
thing civil to say to him on my part ; and as one word begets an- 
other (if he has as little to do as I), I generally fall into conver- 
sation with him. And surely never is my imagination so busy 
as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance, 
and, where those carry me not deep enough, in flying from my 
own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to 
think — as well as a man — upon the occasion. In truth, it is 
the only creature of all the classes of beings below me with 
whom I can do this; for parrots, jackdaws, etc., I never ex- 
change a word with them, nor with the apes, etc., for pretty 
near the same reason ; they act by rote, as the others speak by 
it, and equally make me silent. Nay, my dog and my cat, 
though I value them both (and for my dog he would speak if he 
could), yet somehow or other they neither of them possess the 
talents for conversation; — I can make nothing of a discourse 



486 LAURENCE STERNE 

with them, beyond the proposition, the reply, and the rejoinder, 
which terminated my father's and my mother's conversations 
in his beds of justice, and those uttered, there 's an end of the 
dialogue — But with an ass I can commune forever. 

"Come, Honesty," said I, — seeing it was impracticable to 
pass betwixt him and the gate, — "art thou for coming in. or 
going out?" 

The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. "Well," 
replied I, "we'll wait a minute for thy driver." 

He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully 
the opposite way. "I understand thee perfectly," answered I. 
" If thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee 
to death. Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fel- 
low-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent." 

He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went 
on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hun- 
ger and unsavoriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a 
dozen times, and picked it up again. " God help thee. Jack!" 
said I, "thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter 
day's labor, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages; 't is 
all — all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others. And now 
thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, 
as soot" (for he had cast aside the stem), "and thou hast not 
a friend, perhaps, in all this world, that will give thee a maca- 
roon." — In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I 
had just purchased, and gave him one; and at this moment that 
I am telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of 
pleasantry in the conceit, of seeing how an ass would eat a 
macaroon, than of benevolence in giving him one, which pre- 
sided in the act. 

When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come 
in. The poor beast was heavy loaded; his legs seemed to trem- 
ble under him; he hung rather backwards, and as I pulled at his 
halter it broke short in my hand. He looked up pensive in my 
face, — " Don't thrash me with it, — but if you will, you may." 
" If I do," said I, " I '11 be d d." 

The word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess 
of Andouillets' (so there was no sin in it), when a person 
coming in let fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil's 
cropper, which put an end to the ceremony. 



TRISTRAM SHANDY 487 

... It was a commissary sent to me from the post-office, 
with a rescript in his hand for the payment of some six Hvres 
odd sous. 

" Upon what account ? " said I. " 'T is upon the part of the 
king," replied the commissary, heaving up both his shoulders. 

*'My good friend," quoth I, "as sure as I am I — and you 
are you" — 

"And who are you?" said he. "Don't puzzle me," said I. 
"But it is an indubitable verity," continued I, addressing my- 
self to the commissary, changing only the form of my assevera- 
tion, " that I owe the king of France nothing but my good-will; 
for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all health and pas- 
time in the world" — 

'^ Pardonnez-moi" replied the commissary, "you are in- 
debted to him six livres four sous, for the next post from hence 
to St. Fons, in your route to Avignon, — which being a post 
royal, you pay double for the horses and postilion, — other- 
wise 't would have amounted to no more than three livres two 
sous." 

"But I don't go by land," said I. 

"You may if you please," replied the commissary. 

"Your most obedient servant," said I, — making him a low 
bow. 

The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding, 
made me one, as low again. I never was more disconcerted 
with a bow in my life. "The devil take the serious character of 
these people!" quoth I (aside); "they understand no more of 
irony than this — " 

The comparison was standing close by with his panniers, but 
something sealed up my lips, — I could not pronounce the 
name. 

" Sir," said I, collecting myself, " it is not my intention to take 
post." 

"But you may," said he, persisting in his first reply, — "you 
may take post if you choose." 

"And I may take salt to my pickled herring," said I, "if 
I choose. But I do not choose." 

"But you must pay for it, whether you do or no." 

"Aye! 'for the salt," said I; "I know" — 

"And for the post too," added he. 



488 LAURENCE STERNE 

''Defend me!" cried I. *'I travel by water, — I am going 
down the Rhone this very afternoon ; my baggage is in the boat, 
and I have actually paid nine Hvres for my passage." 

"C'est tout egal, — 't is all one," said he. 

'^Bon Dieu! What, pay for the way I go, and for the way I 
do not go!" 

''C'est tout egal," replied the commissary. 
X "The devil it is!" said I. "But I will go to ten thousand 
Bastilles first. O England! England! thou land of hberty, and 
chmate of good sense ! thou tenderest of mothers and gentlest 
of nurses," cried I, kneeling upon one knee, as I was beginning 
my apostrophe. . . . "'Tis contrary to the law of nature. 
'T is contrary to reason. 'T is contrary to the Gospel." 

"But not to this," said he, putting a printed paper into my 

hand, — 

Par Le Roy. 

"'Tis a pithy prolegomenon," quoth I; and so read on. 



"By all which it appears," quoth I, having read it over, a 
little too rapidly, " that if a man sets out in a post-chaise from 
Paris, he must go on traveling in one all the days of his life, — 
or pay for it." 

"Excuse me," said the commissary; "the spirit of the ordin- 
ance is this, — that if you set out with an intention of running 
post from Paris to Avignon, etc., you shall not change that 
intention or mode of traveling, without first satisfying the 
fermiers for two posts further than the place you repent at. 
And 't is founded," continued he, "upon this, that the revenues 
are not to fall short through your fickleness." 

" O by heavens ! " cried I. "If fickleness is taxable in France, 
we have nothing to do but to make the best peace with you we 
can." 

And so the peace was made. ... 

[maria] 

. . . I was in the most perfect state of bounty and good- will, 
and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating within me, with every 
oscillation of the chaise alike ; so that whether the roads were 



TRISTRAM SHANDY 489 

rough or smooth, it made no difference ; everything I saw or 
had to do with touched upon some secret spring either of sen- 
timent or rapture. 

They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly 
let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly. '"Tis 
Maria," said the postihon, observing I was Hstening. "Poor 
Maria," continued he, leaning his body on one side to let me see 
her, for he was in ahne betwixt us, "is sitting upon a bank play- 
ing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside her." 

The young fellow uttered this with an accent and a look so 
perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow 
I would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to 
Moulins. 

"And who is poor Maria?" said I. 

"The love and pity of all the villages around us," said the 
postilion. " It is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine 
upon so fair, so quick-witted and amiable a maid; and better 
fate did Maria deserve than to have her banns forbid, by the 
intrigues of the curate of the parish who published them — " 

He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, 
put the pipe to her mouth, and began the air again. They were 
the same notes, yet were ten times sweeter. " It is the evening 
service to the Virgin," said the young man; "but who has 
taught her to play it, or how she came by her pipe, no one 
knows. We think that Heaven has assisted her in both, for 
ever since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only 
consolation; she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, 
but plays that service upon it almost night and day." 

The postilion delivered this with so much discretion and 
natural eloquence, that I could not help deciphering something 
in his face above his condition, and should have sifted out his 
history, had not poor Maria taken such full possession of me. 

We had got up, by this time, almost to the bank where Maria 
was sitting: she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair — all 
but two tresses — drawn up into a silk net, with a few olive 
leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side. She was beauti- 
ful ; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest heart-ache, it 
was the moment I saw her. 

" God help her, poor damsel ! Above a hundred masses," said 
the postilion, " have been said in the several parish churches 



490 LAURENCE STERNE 

and convents around, for her, but without effect. We have still 
hopes, as she is sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin at 
last will restore her to herself; but her parents, who know her 
best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her senses are lost 
forever." 

As the postilion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so mel- 
ancholy, so tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the 
chaise to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt her and her 
goat before I relapsed from my enthusiasm. 

Maria looked wistfully for some time at me, and then at her 
goat, — and then at me, — and then at her goat again, and so 
on, alternately. 

"Well, Maria," said I, softly, "what resemblance do you 
find?" 

I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from 
the humblest conviction of what a beast man is, that I asked the 
question; and that I would not have let fall an unseasonable 
pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled 
to all the wit that ever Rabelais scattered. And yet I own my 
heart smote me, and that I so smarted at the very idea of it, 
that I swore I would set up for wisdom, and utter grave sen- 
tences the rest of my days, and never — never attempt again to 
commit mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had 
to live. 

As for writing nonsense to them, I believe there was a reserve, 
— but that I leave to the world. 

Adieu, Maria! Adieu, poor helpless damsel! Some time, but 
not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips. — But I was 
deceived; for that moment she took her pipe, and told me such 
a tale of woe with it that I rose up, and with broken and irregu- 
lar steps walked softly to my chaise. 

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE 
AND ITALY 

1768 

preface: in the desobligeant 
It must have been observed by many a peripatetic philoso- 
pher, that Nature has set up by her own unquestionable au- 
thority certain boundaries and fences to circumscribe the dis- 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 491 

content of man; she has effected her purpose in the quietest and 
easiest manner, by laying him under almost insuperable obliga- 
tions to work out his ease, and to sustain his suffering at home. 
It is there only that she has provided him with the most suit- 
able objects to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that 
burden which, in all countries and ages, has ever been too heavy 
for one pair of shoulders. 'T is true we are endued with an im- 
perfect power of spreading our happiness sometimes beyond 
her limits, but 't is so ordered that, from the want of languages, 
connections, and dependencies, and from the difference in edu- 
cations, customs, and habits, we lie under so many impedi- 
ments in communicating our sensations out of our own sphere, 
as often amount to a total impossibility. 

It will always follow from hence that the balance of senti- 
mental commerce is always against the expatriated adventurer : 
he must buy what he has little occasion for, at their- own price; 
his conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs 
without a large discount; and this, by the by, eternally driving 
him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversa- 
tion as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to 
guess at his party. 

This brings me to my point, and naturally leads me (if the 
see-saw of this Desohligeant will but let me get on) into the effi- 
cient as well as final causes of traveling. Your idle people that 
leave their native country and go abroad for some reason or 
reasons which may be derived from one of these general 
causes — V 

Infirmity of body, 

Imbecility of the mind, or 

Inevitable necessity. 
The two first include all those who travel by land or by water, 
laboring with pride, curiosity, vanity, or spleen, subdivided 
and combined in infinitum. 

The third class includes the whole army of peregrine mar- 
tyrs; more especially those travelers who set out upon their 
travels with the benefit of the clergy, either as delinquents 
traveling under the direction of governors recommended by the 
magistrate, or young gentlemen transported by the cruelty of 
parents and guardians, and traveling under the direction of 
governors recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and Glasgow. 



492 LAURENCE STERNE 

There is a fourth class, but their number is so small that they 
would not deserve a distinction, was it not necessary in a work 
of this nature to observe the greatest precision and nicety, to 
avoid a confusion of character. And these men I speak of are 
such as cross the seas and sojourn in a land of strangers, for 
various reasons and upon various pretences; but as they might 
also save themselves and others a great deal of unnecessary 
trouble by saving their money at home, and as their reasons for 
traveling are the least complex of any other species of emi- 
grants, I shall distinguish these gentlemen by the name of 

Simple Travelers. 

Thus the whole circle of travelers may be reduced to the fol- 
lowing heads: 

Idle Travelers, 

Inquisitive Travelers, 

Lying Travelers, 

Proud Travelers, 

Vain Travelers, 

Splenetic Travelers ; 
then follow the Travelers of Necessity, 

The delinquent and felonious Traveler, 

The unfortunate and innocent Traveler, 

The simple Traveler, 
And last of all (if you please) 

The Sentimental Traveler, 
meaning thereby myself, who have traveled, and of which I am 
now sitting down to give an account, — as much out of neces- 
sity, and the besoin de voyager, as any one in the class. . . . 

NAMPONT 

"And this," said he, putting the remains of a crust into his 
wallet, — "and this should have been thy portion," said he, 
" hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me." 

I thought by the accent it had been an apostrophe to his child ; 
but 'twas to his ass, and to the very ass we had seen dead in the 
road, which had occasioned La Fleur's misadventure. The man 
seemed to lament it much, and it instantly brought into my 
mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he did it with more true 
touches of nature. 

The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door. 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 493 

with the ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took 
up from time to time, then laid them down, looked at them, 
and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his 
wallet again, as if to eat it, held it some time in his hand, then 
laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle, — looked wistfully at the 
little arrangement he had made, and then gave a sigh. 

The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La 
Fleur amongst the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready; as 
I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over 
their heads. 

He said he had come last from Spain, where he had been from 
the furthest borders of Franconia, and had got so far on his 
return home, when his ass died. Every one seemed desirous to 
know what business could have taken so old and poor a man so 
far a journey from his own home. 

It had pleased Heaven, he said, to bless him with three sons, 
the finest lads in all Germany; but having in one week lost two 
of the eldest of them by the smallpox, and the youngest falling 
ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them 
all, and made a vow, if Heaven would not take him from him 
also, he would go in gratitude to St. lago in Spain. 

When the mourner got thus far on his story, he stopped to 
pay nature his tribute, — and wept bitterly. He said Heaven 
had accepted the conditions, and that he had set out from his 
cottage with this poor creature, who had been a patient part- 
ner of his journey, — that it had eat the same bread with 
him all the way, and was unto him as a friend. 

Everybody who stood about heard the poor fellow with con- 
cern. La Fleur offered him money; — the mourner said he did 
not want it, — it was not the value of the ass, but the loss of 
him. The ass, he said, he was assured loved him; and upon this 
told them a long story of a mischance upon their passage over 
the Pyrenean mountains, which had separated them from each 
other three days, during which time the ass had sought him as 
much as he had sought the ass, and that they had neither scarce 
eat or drank till they met. 

" Thou hast one comfort, friend," said I, " at least, in the loss 
of thy poor beast. I 'm sure thou hast been a merciful master to 
him." 

" Alas ! " said the mourner, " I thought so, when he was alive; 



494 LAURENCE STERNE 

but now that he is dead I think otherwise. I fear the weight of 
myself and my afflictions together have been too much for him, 
— they have shortened the poor creature's days, and I fear I 
have them to answer for." 

Shame on this world! said I to myself. Did we love each 
other as this poor soul but loved his ass, 't would be something. 

PARIS 

When I got home to my hotel, La Fleur told me I had been 
inquired after by the Lieutenant de Police. " The deuce take 
it!" said I; " I know the reason." It is time the reader should 
know it, for in the order of things in which it happened, it was 
omitted; not that it was out of my head, but that, had I told it 
then, it might have been forgot now, — and now is the time I 
want it. 

I had left London with so much precipitation that it never 
entered my mind that we were at war with France ; and had 
reached Dover, and had looked through my glass at the hills 
beyond Boulogne, before the idea presented itself, and with 
this in its train, — that there was no getting there without a 
passport. Go but to the end of a street, I have a mortal aver- 
sion for returning back no wiser than I set out; and as this was 
one of the greatest efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I 
could less bear the thoughts of it. So, hearing the Count de 

had hired the packet, I begged he would take me in his 

suite. The Count had some little knowledge of me, so made 
little or no difficulty, — only said his inclination to serve me 
could reach no further than Calais, as he was to return by way 
of Brussels to Paris; however, when I had once passed there, I 
might get to Paris without interruption; but that in Paris I 
must make friends and shift for myself. " Let me get to Paris, 
Monsieur Count," said I, " and I shall do very well." So I em- 
barked, and never thought more of the matter. 

When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been 
inquiring after me, the thing instantly recurred, and by the 
time La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came 
into my room to tell me the same thing, with this addition to 
it, that my passport bad been particularly asked after. The 
master of the hotel concluded with saying he hoped I had one. 
*'Not I, faith!" said I. The master of the hotel retired three 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 495 

steps from me, as from an infected person, as I declared this; 
and poor La Fleur advanced three steps towards me, and with 
that sort of movement which a good soul makes to succor a dis- 
tressed one ; — the fellow won my heart by it, and from that 
single trait I knew his character as perfectly, and could rely 
upon it as firmly, as if he had served me with fidehty for seven 
years. 

'' Mon seignetcr!" cried the master of the hotel, but recol- 
lecting himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly changed 
the tone of it. "If Monsieur," said he, "has not a passport, 
{apparomnent) in all likelihood he has friends in Paris who can 
procure him one." " Not that I know of," quoth I, with an air 
of indifference. " Then, certes,'' replied he, "you'll be sent to 
the Bastille or the Chatelet, au moins." " Poo!" said I, " the 
King of France is a good-natured soul, — he'll hurt nobody." 
'^Cela n'empeche p(us," said he. "You will certainly be sent to 
the Bastille to-morrow morning." "But I 've taken your lodg- 
ings for a month," answered I, "and I'll not quit them a day 
before the time, for all the kings of France in the world." La 
Fleur whispered in my ear that nobody could oppose the king 
of France. 

"Fardi ! " said my host. " Ces Messieurs Anglois sont des gens 
tres extraordinaires r' And having both said and sworn it, he 
went out. 

I could not find it in my heart to torture La Fleur's with a 
serious look upon the subject of my embarrassment, which was 
the reason I had treated it so cavalierly ; and to show him how 
fight it lay upon my mind, I dropped the subject entirely, and, 
whilst he waited upon me at supper, talked to him with more 
than usual gayety about Paris, and of the Opera Comique. . . . 

As for the Bastille, the terror is in the word. Make the most 
of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastifie is but another word 
for a tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you 
can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a 
year. But with nine livres a day, and pen and ink and paper and 
patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within 
— at least for a month or six weeks, at the end of which, if he 
is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a 
better and wiser man than he went in. 

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court- 



496 LAURENCE STERNE 

yard, as I settled this account, and remember I walked down 
stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. 
Beshrew the sombre pencil! said Ivauntingly, for I envy not 
its power, which paints the evils of hfe with so hard and deadly 
a coloring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has mag- 
nified herself, and blackened; reduce them to their proper size 
and hue, she overlooks them. 'T is true, said I, correcting the 
proposition, — the Bastille is not an evil to be despised; but 
strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade the doors, — 
call it simply a confinement, and suppose 't is some tyrant of a 
distemper, and not of a man, which holds you in it, — the evil 
vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. 

I was interrupted in the hey-day of this soliloquy, with a 
voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "it could 
not get out." I looked up and down the passage, and seeing 
neither man, woman, or child, I went ojit without further 
attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the 
same words repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a 
starling hung in a little cage. "I can't get out, I can't get out!" 
said the starling. 

I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came 
through the passage it ran, fluttering to the side towards which 
they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. 
"I can't get out!" said the starling. 

"God help thee!" said I, "but I'll let thee out, cost what it 
will." So I turned about the cage to get to the door; it was 
twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no 
getting it open without pulhng the cage to pieces; — I took 
both hands to it. 

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliver- 
ance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his 
breast against it, as if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said 
I, "I cannot set thee at liberty." "No," said the starling, "I 
can't get out — I can't get out !" said the starling. 

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; or 
do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated 
spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so sud- 
denly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true 
in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they 
overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastille; and 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 497 

I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in 
going down them. 

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still. Slavery! said I, — still 
thou art a bitter draught! And though thousands in all ages V 
have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that 
account. — 'T is thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, — 
addressing myself to Liberty — whom all in public or in private 
worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature 
herself shall change! No tint of words can spot thy snowy 
mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron. With thee 
to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier 
than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious 
Heaven ! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my 
ascent, — grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and 
give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower 
down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, 
upon those heads which are aching for them. 

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down 
close to my table, and, leaning my head upon my hand, I began 
to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right 
frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. 

I was going to begin with the milhons of my fellow-creatures, 
born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affect- 
ing the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that 
the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a 
single captive, and, having first shut him up in his dungeon, I 
then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his 
picture. 

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation 
and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it 
was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I 
saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze 
had not once fanned his blood, — he had seen no sun, no moon, 
in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed 
through his lattice ; — his children — 

But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on 
with another part of the portrait. 

He was sitting upon the ground, upon a little straw, in the 
furthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair 
and bed. A Httle calendar of small sticks were laid at the head, 



^x 



498 LAURENCE STERNE 

notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed 
there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a 
rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the 
heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hope- 
less eye towards the door, then cast it down, — shook his head, 
and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon 
his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the 
bundle. He gave a deep sigh, — I saw the iron enter into his 
soul. I burst into tears, — I could not sustain the picture of 
confinement which my fancy had drawn. I started up from my 
chair, and called La Fleur; I bid him bespeak me a remise, and 
have it ready at the door of the hotel by nine in the morning. 

MOULINES 

I never felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape 
till now, — to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest 
part of France, in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is 
pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is 
lifted up, — a journey through each step of which Music beats 
time to Labor, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry 
in their clusters, — to pass through this with my affections 
flying out and kindling at every group before me — and every 
one of them was pregnant with adventures. Just Heaven ! 
it would fill up twenty volumes ; and alas ! I have but a few small 
pages left of this to crowd it into, — and half of these must be 
taken up with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with 
near Mouhnes. 

The story he had told of that disordered maid affected me not 
a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighborhood 
where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, that I 
could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a 
league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, 
to inquire after her. 'T is going, I own, like the Knight of the 
Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures; but 
I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the 
existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them. 

The old mother came to the door. Her looks told me the 
story before she opened her mouth; she had lost her husband. 
He had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's senses, 
about a month before. She had feared, at first, she added, 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 499 

that it would have plundered her poor girl of what little under- 
standing was left ; but on the contrary it had brought her more 
to herself. Still she could not rest; — her poor daughter, she 
said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road. — 

Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? And what 
made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be tuned to joy, 
to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman 
stood and told it? I beckoned to the postilion to turn back 
into the road. 

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little 
opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor 
Maria sitting under a poplar; — she was sitting with her elbow 
in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand. 
A small brook ran at the foot of the tree. 

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines, and 
La Fleur to bespeak my supper; and that I would walk after 
him. 

She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described 
her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted 
within a silk net. She had, superadded likewise to her jacket, 
a pale green ribbon, which fell across her shoulder to the waist, 
at the end of which hung her pipe. Her goat had been as faith- 
less as her lover, and she had got a little dog in lieu of him. 
which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle; as I looked at 
her dog, she drew him towards her with the string. "Thou 
shalt not leave me, Sylvio," said she. I looked in Maria's eyes, 
and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover 
or her little goat; for as she uttered them the tears trickled 
down her cheeks. 

I sat down close by her, and Maria let me wipe them away 
as they fell, with my handkerchief. I then steeped it in my own, 
— and then in hers — and then in mine — and then I wiped 
hers again, — and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions 
within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any 
combinations of matter and motion. 

I am positive I have a soul ; nor can all the books with which 
materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the 
contrary. 

When Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she 
remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down 



500 LAURENCE STERNE 

betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said she 
was unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two 
accounts, — that, ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; 
and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she 
had beat him for the theft; — she had washed it, she said, in 
the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket, to restore it to 
him in case she should ever see him again, — which, she added, 
he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the 
handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it; she had folded it 
up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves, tied round with a tendril. 
On opening it, I saw an S. marked in one of the corners. 

She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and 
walked round St. Peter's once, and returned back; that she 
found her way alone across the Apennines, — had traveled 
over all Lombardy without money, and through the flinty 
roads of Savoy without shoes. How she had borne it, and how 
she had got supported, she could not tell; "but God tempers 
the wind," said Maria, '' to the shorn lamb." 

" Shorn indeed! and to the quick," said I. "And wast thou in 
my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it 
and shelter thee. Thou shouldst eat of my own bread , and drink 
of my own cup; I would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weak- 
nesses and wanderings I would seek after thee and bring thee 
back. When the sun went down I would say my prayers, and 
when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy 
pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted 
for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart." 

Nature melted within me, as I uttered this; and Maria, ob- 
serving, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too 
much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream. 
"And where will you dry it, Maria? " said I. " I '11 dry it in my 
bosom," said she; "'t will do me good." "And is your heart 
still so warm, Maria?" said I. 

I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows; — 
she looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face, and 
then, without saying anything, took her pipe and played her 
service to the Virgin. The string I had touched ceased to vi- 
brate; in a moment or two Maria returned to herself, let her 
pipe fall, and rose up. 

"And where are you going, Maria?" said I. She said, to 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 501 

Moulines. ''Let us go," said I, "together." Maria put her arm 
within mine, and lengthening the string, to let the dog follow — 
in that order we entered Moulines. 

Though I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, 
yet when we got into the middle of this, I stopped to take my 
last look and last farewell of Maria. 

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of 
fine forms; affliction had touched her looks with something that 
was scarce earthly, — still she was feminine; and so much was 
there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for 
in woman, that, could the traces be ever worn out of her brain, 
and those of Eliza out of mine, she should not only eat of my 
bread and drink of my own cup, but Maria should He in my 
bosom, and be unto me as a daughter. 

Adieu, poor luckless maiden! Imbibe the oil and wine which 
the compassion of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his way, now 
pours into thy wounds; the Being who has twice bruised thee 
can only bind them up forever. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHREY CLINKER 

1771 

[The epistolary form of Humphrey Clinker gave Smollett the opportun- 
ity to make it a medium of no little description and comment on contem- 
porary life and interests, as well as a novel. It is only this incidental aspect 
which is represented by the following extracts, which present contrasting 
views of eighteenth century London, from the standpoints of different 
members of the same party of travelers. The cant piety of the style of the 
serving-woman is a reflection of the Wesleyan movement, at this period 
sufficiently conspicuous to become the object of satire.] 

Squire Bramble to Dr. Lewis 

London, May 29. 

Dear Doctor: London is literally new to me; new in its 
streets, houses, and even in its situation. As the Irishman said, 
"London is now gone out of town." What Ileft open fields, 
producing hay and corn, I now find covered with streets and 
squares and palaces and churches. I am credibly informed that, 
in the space of seven years, eleven thousand new houses have 
been built in one quarter of Westminster, exclusive of what is 
daily added to other parts of this unwieldy metropolis. Pimhco 
and Knightsbridge are now almost joined to Chelsea and Ken- 
sington; and if this infatuation continues for half a century, 
I suppose the whole county of Middlesex will be covered with 
brick. 

It must be allowed, indeed, for the credit of the present age, 
that London and Westminster are much better paved and 
lighted than they were formerly. The new streets are spacious, 
regular, and airy, and the houses generally convenient. The 
bridge at Blackfriars is a noble monument of taste and public 
spirit, — I wonder how they stumbled on a work of such magnifi- 
cence and utihty. But, notwithstanding these improvements, 
the capital is become an overgrown monster, which, like a 
dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities 
without nourishment and support. The absurdity will appear 



HUMPHREY CLINKER 503 

in its full force when we consider that one sixth part of the na- 
tives of this whole extensive kingdom is crowded within the bills 
of mortality.^ What wonder that our villages are depopulated, 
and our farms in want of day-laborers? The abolition of small 
farms is but one cause of the decrease of population. Indeed, 
theTncredible increase of horses and black cattle, to answer the 
purposes of luxury, requires a prodigious quantity of hay and 
grass, which are raised and managed without much labor ; but 
a number of hands will always be wanted for the different 
branches of agriculture, whether the farms be large or small. 
The tide of luxury h.as^ swept all the inhabitants from the open 
country. The poorest squire, as well as the richest peer, must 
have his house in town, and make a figure with an extraordinary 
nu^nber of domestics. The ploughboys, cowherds, and lower 
hinds are debauched and seduced by the appearance and dis- 
course of those coxcombs in livery, when they make their 
summer excursions. They desert their dirt and drudgery, and 
swarm up to London in hopes of getting into service, where 
they can live luxuriously and wear fine clothes, without being 
obliged to work ; for idleness is natural to man. Great numbers 
of these, being disappointed in their expectation, become 
thieves and sharpers; and London, being an immense wilder- 
ness, in which there is neither watch nor ward of any significa- 
tion, nor any order of police, affords them lurking-places as 
well as prey. 

There are many causes that contribute to the daily increase 
of this enormous mass, but they may be all resolved into the 
grand source of luxury and corruption. About five-and-twenty 
years ago, very few even of the most opulent citizens of Lon- 
don kept any equipage, or even any servants in livery. Their 
tables produced nothing but plain boiled and roasted, with a 
bottle of port and a tankard of beer. At present, every trader 
in any degree of credit, every broker and attorney, maintains 
a couple of footmen, a coachman, and postiHon. He has his 
town house and his country house, his coach and his post- 
chaise. His wife and daughters appear in the richest stuffs, be- 
spangled with diamonds. They frequent the court, the opera, 
the theatre, and the masquerade. They hold assembUes at 

^ A term applied to a district in London, consisting of 109 parishes, to which for a long 
time the weekly "bills" (reports) of mortaUty were confined. 



504 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

their own houses; they make sumptuous entertainments, and 
treat with the richest wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and 
Champagne. The substantial tradesman, who was wont to 
pass his evenings at the ale-house for fourpence-halfpenny, now 
spends three shillings at the tavern, while his wife keeps card- 
tables at home; she must also have fine clothes, her chaise, or 
pad, with country lodgings, and go three times a week to 
public diversions. Every clerk, apprentice, and even waiter of 
a tavern or coffee-house, maintains a gelding by himself, or 
in partnership, and assumes the air and apparel of a petit- 
maitre. The gayest places of public entertainment are filled 
with fashionable figures, which, upon inquiry, will be found 
to be journeymen-tailors, serving-men, and abigails, disguised 
like their betters. In short, there is no distinction or subordina- 
tion left. The different departments of life are jumbled together. 
The hod-carrier, the low mechanic, the tapster, the publican, 
the shopkeeper, the pettifogger, the citizen, and courtier, all 
tread upon the kibes of one another. Actuated by the demons 
of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen everywhere, 
rambling, riding, roUing, rushing, jostling, mixing, bouncing, 
cracking, and crashing in one vile ferment of stupidity and 
corruption. All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they 
were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer 
them to be at rest. . . . 

The diversions of the times are not ill suited to the genius of 
this incongruous monster called the public. Give it noise, con- 
fusion, glare, glitter; it has no idea of elegance and propriety. 
What are the amusements at Ranelagh? One half of the com- 
pany are following one another's tails, in an eternal circle, like 
so many blind asses in an olive-mill, where they can neither dis- 
course, distinguish, nor be distinguished; while the other half 
are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine 
or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the 
evening. As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is 
well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly. 
Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry 
ornaments, ill conceived and poorly executed, without any 
unity of design or propriety of disposition. It is an unnatural 
assemblage of objects, fantastically illuminated in broken 
masses, seemingly contrived to dazzle the eyes and divert the 



HUMPHREY CLINKER 505 

imagination of the vulgar. Here a wooden lion — there a stone 
statue; in one place a range of things like coffee-house boxes, 
covered a- top; in another, a parcel of ale-house benches; in a 
third, a puppet-show representation of a tin cascade ; in a fourth, 
a gloomy cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault, half 
lighted; in a fifth, a scanty slip of grass-plot that would not 
afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which 
nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, 
are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal 
rheums of an aguish cHmate; and through these gay scenes a 
few lamps glimmer like so many farthing candles. . . . 

Jiine 8. 

... I ampentupinfrowsylodgings,where there is not room 
enough to swing a cat, and I breathe the steams of endless 
putrefaction; and these would undoubtedly produce a pesti- 
lence, if they were not qualified by the gross acid of seacoal, 
which is in itself a pernicious nuisance to lungs of any delicacy 
of texture; but even this boasted corrector cannot prevent 
those languid, sallow looks, that distinguish the inhabitants of 
London from those ruddy swains that lead a country life. I go 
to bed after midnight, jaded and restless from the dissipations 
of the day. I start every hour from my sleep, at the horrid 
noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through every street, 
and thundering at every door; — a set of useless fellows, who 
serve no other purpose but that of disturbing the repose of the 
inhabitants. And by five o'clock I start out of bed in conse- 
quence of the still more dreadful alarm made by the country 
carts and noisy rustics bellowing green peas under my window. 
Ii_Xjyouid drink water, I must quaff the mawkish contents 
of an open aqueduct, exposed to all manner of defilement, or 
swallow that which comes from the river Thames, impregnated 
with all the filth of London and Westminster; . . . composed 
of all the drugs, materials, and poisons used in mechanics 
and manufactures, enriched with the putrefying carcases of 
beasts and men, and mixed with the scourings of all the wash- 
tubs, kennels, and common sewers within the bills of mor- 
tality. . . . 

It must be owned that Covent Garden affords some good 
fruit; which, however, is always engrossed by a few individuals 



5o6 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

of overgrown fortune, at an exorbitant price, so that little else 
than the refuse of the market falls to the share of the commun- 
ity; and that is distributed by such filthy hands as I cannot 
look at without loathing. . . . I need not dwell upon the pallid, 
contaminated mash which they call strawberries, soiled and 
tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with 
dirt, and then presented with the worst milk, thickened with 
the worst flour into a bad hkeness of cream. But the milk itself 
should not pass unanalyzed, — the produce of faded cabbage- 
leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot water, frothed with 
bruised snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed 
to foul rinsings discharged from doors and windows, overflow- 
ings from mud-carts, spatterings from coach-wheels, dirt and 
trash chucked into it by roguish boys. . . . 

A companionable man will undoubtedly put up with many 
inconveniences for the sake of enjoying agreeable society. A 
facetious friend of mine used to say the wine could not be bad 
where the company was agreeable, — a maxim which, however, 
ought to be taken cum grano salts. But what is the society of 
London, that I should be tempted for its sake to mortify my 
senses, and compound with such uncleanness as my soul ab- 
hors? All the people I see are too much engrossed by schemes 
of interest or ambition, to have any room left for sentiment 
or friendship. Even in some of my old acquaintance, those 
schemes and pursuits have obliterated all traces of our former 
connection. Conversation is reduced to party disputes and 
ilHberal altercation; social commerce to formal visits and 
card-playing. If you pick up a diverting original by accident, 
it may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities; he is 
generally a Tartar at bottom, — a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic. 
Every person you deal with endeavors to over-reach you in the 
way of business. You are preyed upon by idle mendicants, who 
beg in the phrase of borrowing and live on the spoils of the 
stranger; your tradesmen are without conscience, your friends 
without affection, and your dependents without fidelity. . . . 

Lydia Melford to Letitia Willis 

London, Maj' 31. 

My dear Letty: . . . About five weeks ago we arrived in 
London, after an easy journey from Bath; during which, how- 



HUMPHREY CLINKER 507 

ever, we were overturned, and met with some other Httle inci- 
dents which had like to have occasioned a misunderstanding 
betwixt my uncle and aunt. But now, thank God, they are 
happily reconciled ; we live in harmony together, and every day 
make parties to see the wonders of this vast metropolis, — 
which, however, I cannot pretend to describe, for I have not 
yet seen one hundredth part of its curiosities, and I am quite in 
a maze of admiration. The cities of London and Westminster 
are spread out to an incredible extent. The streets, squares, 
rows, lanes, and alleys are innumerable. Palaces, public build- 
ings, and churches rise in every quarter, and amongst these 
last St. Paul's appears with the most astonishing preeminence. 
They say it is not so large as St. Peter's at Rome, but for my 
own part I can have no idea of any earthly temple more grand 
and magnificent. 

But even these superb objects are not so striking as the 
crowds of people that swarm in the streets. I at first imagined 
that some great assembly was just dismissed, and wanted to 
stand aside till the multitude should pass; but this human tide 
continues to flow, without interruption or abatement, from 
morn till night. Then there is such an infinity of gay equipages, 
coaches, chariots, chaises, and other carriages, continually 
rolling and shifting before your eyes, that one's head grows 
giddy looking at them, and the imagination is quite confounded 
with splendor and variety. Nor is the prospect by water less 
grand and astonishing than that by land : you see three stupen- 
dous bridges, joining the opposite banks of a broad, deep, and 
rapid river, so vast, so stately, so elegant, that they seem to be 
the work of the giants; betwixt them the whole surface of the 
Thames is covered with small vessels, — barges, boats, and 
wherries, passing to and fro; and below the three bridges such a 
prodigious forest of masts, for miles together, that you would 
think all the ships in the universe were here assembled. All 
that you read of wealth and grandeur in the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments and the Persian Tales, concerning Bagdad, 
Diarbekir, Damascus, Ispahan, and Samarcand, is here real- 
ized. Ranelagh looks like the enchanted palace of a genie, 
adorned with the most exquisite performances of painting, 
carving, and gilding, enlightened with a thousand golden lamps 
that emulate the noonday sun; crowded with the great, the 



5o8 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

rich, the gay, the happy, and the fair, glittering with doth of 
gold and silver, lace, embroidery, and precious stones. While 
these exulting sons and daughters of felicity tread this round 
of pleasure, or regale in different parties and separate lodges, 
with fine imperial tea and other delicious refreshments, their 
ears are entertained with the most ravishing delights of music, 
both instrumental and vocal. . . . 

At nine o'clock in a charming moonlight evening, we em- 
barked at Ranelagh for Vauxhall,in a wherry so light and slen- 
der that we looked like so many fairies sailing in a nutshell. 
. . . The pleasure of this little excursion was, however, damped 
by my being sadly frighted at our landing, where there was a 
terrible confusion of wherries, and a crowd of people bawling 
and swearing and quarreling; nay, a parcel of ugly-looking fel- 
lows came running into the water, and laid hold on our boat with 
great violence, to pull it ashore, nor would they quit their hold 
till my brother struck one of them over the head with his cane. 
But this flutter was fully recompensed by the pleasures of Vaux- 
hall, which I no sooner entered, than I was dazzled and con- 
founded with the variety of beauties that rushed all at once on 
my eye. Imagine to yourself, my dear Letty, a spacious gar- 
den, part laid out in delightful walks, bounded with high 
hedges and trees, and paved with gravel ; part exhibiting a won- 
derful assemblage of the most picturesque and striking objects, 
— pavilions, lodges, groves, grottoes, lawns, temples, and cas- 
cades, porticoes, colonnades, and rotundas, adorned with pillars, 
statues, and paintings; the whole illuminated with an infinite 
number of lamps, disposed in different figures of suns, stars, 
and constellations, — the place crowded with the gayest 
company, ranging through those blissful shades or supping in 
different lodges on cold collations, enlivened with mirth, free- 
dom, and good humor, and animated by an excellent band of 
music. . . . 

Winifred Jenkins to Mary Jones 

London, June 3. 

. . . O Molly! what shall I say of London? All the towns 

that ever I beheld in my born days are no more than Welsh 

barrows and crumlecks to this wonderful sitty! Even Bath 

itself is but a fillitch; in the naam of God — one would think 



HUMPHREY CLINKER 509 

there 's no end of the streets, but the land 's end. Then there 's 
such a power of people, going hurry skurry ! Such a racket of 
coxes ! Such a noise and hallibaloo ! So many strange sights to 
be seen! O gracious! my poor Welsh brain has been spinning 
like a top ever since I came hither! And I have seen the park, 
and the paleass of Saint Gimses, and the king's and the queen's 
magisterian pursing, and the sweet young princes, and the 
hillyfents, and pye-bald ass, and all the rest of the royal fam- 

Last week I went with mistress to the Tower, to see the 
crowns and wild beasts; and there was a monstracious lion, 
with teeth half a quarter long! ... I was afterwards of a 
party at Sadler's Wells, where I saw such tumbHng and dancing 
upon ropes and wires, that I was frightened, and ready to go into 
a fit. I tho't it was all inchantment, and believing myself be- 
witched, began for to cry. You knows as how the witches in 
Wales fly on broomsticks; but here was flying without any 
broomstick, or thing in the varsal world, and firing of pistols in 
the air, and blowing of trumpets, and swinging, and rolling of 
wheelbarrows on a wire (God bliss us !) no thicker than a sew- 
ing-thread; that, to be sure, they must deal with the devil. A 
fine gentleman, with a pig's tail and a golden sord by his side, 
came to comfit me, and offered for to treat me to a pint of wind; 
but I would not stay; and so, in going through the dark pas- 
sage, he began to show his cloven futt, and went for to be rude. 
My fellow-sarvant Umphry Khnker bid him be sivil, and he 
gave the young man a douse in the chops; but, i'fackins, Mr. 
Klinkerwasn't long in his debt; with a good oaken sapling he 
dusted his doublet, for all his golden cheese-toaster, and fipping 
me under his arm, carried me huom, I nose not how, being I was 
in such a flustration. But, thank God! I'm now vaned from 
all such vanities; for what are those rarities and vagaries to the 
glories that shall be revealed hereafter ! O Molly ! let not your 
poor heart be puffed up with vanity. 

V I had almost forgot to tell you that I have had my hair cut 
/and pippered, and singed, and bolstered, and buckled in the 
newest fashion, by a French freezer — "Parley vow Francey 
— Vee madmansell!" I now carries my head higher than ar- 
row private gentlewoman of Vales. Last night, coming huom 
from the meeting, I was taken by lamplight for an imminent 



510 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

poulterer's daughter, a great beauty, — but, as I was saying, 
this is all vanity and vexation of spirit. The pleasures of Lon- 
don are no better than sower whey and stale cyder, when com- 
pared to the joys of the New Gerusalem. 

Dear Mary Jones! An please God, when I return I'll bring 
you a new cap, with a turkey-shell comb, and a pyehouse ser- 
mon, that was preached in the Tabernacle. And I pray of all 
love, you will mind your vriting and your spilling; for, craving 
your pardon, Molly, it made me suet to disseyffer your last 
scrabble, which was delivered by the hind at Bath. O voman! 
voman! if thou hadst but the least consumption of what plea- 
sure we scullers have, when we can cunster the crabbidst buck 
off hand, and spell the ethnitch vords without lucking at the 
primmer! . . , 



FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D'ARBLAY) 
DIARY AND LETTERS 

[Madame d'Arblay's Diary and Letters were published in 1842, two 
years after her death, by her niece Charlotte Barrett. Of the extracts here 
reproduced, the first dates from the time when the writer had won sudden 
fame through her first novel, Evelina (1778) ; the third and fourth are from 
the period of her service as "second Keeper of the Robes" to the Queen 
(1786-91).] 

[dr. Johnson] 

August 3, 1778. 

. . . When we were summoned to dinner, Mrs. Thrale made 
my father and me sit on each side of her. I said that I hoped I 
did not take Dr. Johnson's place, — for he had not yet ap- 
peared. 

"No," ansvi^ered Mrs. Thrale, " he will sit by you, which I am 
sure will give him great pleasure," 

Soon after we were seated, this great man entered. I have so 
true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me 
with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirm- 
ities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual con- 
vulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, 
and sometimes of all together. 

Mrs. Thrale introduced me to him, and he took his place. 
We had a noble dinner, and a most elegant dessert. Dr. John- 
son, in the middle of dinner, asked Mrs. Thrale what was in 
some little pies that were near him. 

"Mutton," answered she, "so I don't ask you to eat any, 
because I know you despise it." 

"No, madam, no," cried he, "I despise nothing that is good 
of its sort; but I am now too proud to eat it. Sitting by Miss 
Burney makes me very proud to-day!" 

"Miss Burney," said Mrs. Thrale, laughing, "you must take 
great care of your heart if Dr. Johnson attacks it; for I assure 
you he is not often successless." 

"What 's that you say, madam? " cried he. "Are you making 
mischief between the young lady and me already?" 

A little while after he drank Mrs. Thrale's health and mine. 



512 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

and then added: '"T is a terrible thing that we cannot wish 
young ladies well without wishing them to become old women ! " 

"But some people," said Mr. Seward, "are old and young at 
the same time, for they wear so well that they never look old." 

"No, sir, no," cried the doctor, laughing; "that never yet 
was; you might as well say they are at the same time tall and 
short. I remember an epitaph to that purpose, which is in — " 
(I have quite forgot what, and also the name it was made upon, 
but the rest I recollect exactly: — 

" lies buried here; 



So early wise, so lasting fair, 

That none, unless her years you told, 

Thought her a child, or thought her old.") 

Mrs. Thrale then repeated some lines in French, and Dr. 
Johnson some more in Latin. An epilogue of Mr. Garrick's to 
Bonduca was then mentioned, and Dr. Johnson said it was a 
miserable performance, and everybody agreed it was the worst 
he had ever made. 

"And yet," said Mr. Seward, "it has been very much ad- 
mired ; but it is in praise of English valor, and so I suppose the 
subject made it popular." 

"I don't know, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "anything about the 
subject, for I could not read on till I came to it; I got through 
half a dozen lines, but I could observe no other subject than 
eternal dullness. I don't know what is the matter with David; 
I am afraid he is grown superannuated, for his prologues and 
epilogues used to be incomparable." 

"Nothing is so fatiguing," said Mrs. Thrale, "as the life of a 
wit. He and Wilkes are the two oldest men of their ages I know, 
for they have both worn themselves out by being eternally on 
the rack to give entertainment to others." 

"David, madam," said the doctor, "looks much older than 
he is; for his face has had double the business of any other 
man's. It is never at rest; when he speaks one minute, he has 
quite a different countenance to what he assumes the next. I 
don't believe he ever kept the same look for half an hour to- 
gether in the whole course of his hfe; and such an eternal, rest- 
less, fatiguing play of the muscles must certainly wear out a 
man's face before its real time." 



DIARY AND LETTERS 513 

*'0 yes," cried Mrs. Thrale, "we must certainly make some 
allowance for such wear and tear of a man's face." 

The next name that was started was that of Sir John Haw- 
kins, and Mrs. Thrale said: ''Why, now. Dr. Johnson, he is an- 
other of those whom you suffer nobody to abuse but yourself; 
Garrick is one, too; for if any other person speaks against him, 
you browbeat him in a minute!" 

"Why, madam," answered he, "they don't know when to 
abuse him , and when to praise him . I will allow no man to speak 
ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why, 
really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom ; but to 
be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned 
he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that 
cannot easily be defended." 

We all laughed, as he meant we should, at this curious man- 
ner of speaking in his favor; and he then related an anecdote 
that he said he knew to be true in regard to his meanness. He 
said that Sir John and he once belonged to the same club, but 
that as he eat no supper after the first night of his admission, 
he desired to be excused paying his share. 

"And was he excused?" 

"O yes; for no man is angry at another for being inferior to 
himself; we all scorned him, and admitted his plea. For my 
part, I was such a fool as to pay my share for wine, though I 
never tasted any. But Sir John was a most undubbable man! 
And this," continued he, "reminds*me of a gentleman and lady 
with whom I traveled once; I suppose I must call them gentle- 
man and lady, according to form, because they traveled in their 
own coach and four horses. But at the first inn where we 
stopped, the lady called for — a pint of ale! and when it came, 
quarreled with the waiter for not giving full measure. Now 
Madame Duval ^ could not have done a grosser thing!" 

Oh, how everybody laughed! and to be sure I did not glow 
at all, nor munch fast, nor look on my plate, nor lose any part of 
my usual composure ! But how grateful do I feel to this dear 
Dr. Johnson, for never naming me and the book as belonging 
one to the other, and yet making an allusion that showed his 
thoughts led to it, and, at the same time, that seemed to jus- 
tify the character as being natural! But indeed, the delicacy 

* A character in Miss Burney's Evelina. 



514 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

I met with from him, and from all the Thrales, was yet more 
flattering to me than the praise with which I have heard they 
have honored my book. 

[the king] 

December i6, 1785. ' 

. . . After dinner, while Mrs. Delany was left alone, as usual, 
to take a little rest, — for sleep it but seldom proves, — Mr. B. 
Dewes, his little daughter, Miss Port, and myself, went into 
the drawing-room. And here, while, to pass the time, I was 
amusing the little girl with teaching her some Christmas games, 
in which her father and cousin joined, Mrs. Delany came in. 
We were all in the middle of the room, and in some confusion! 
but she had but just come up to us to inquire what was going 
forwards, and I was disentangling myself from Miss Dewes, to 
be ready to fly off if any one knocked at the street door, when 
the door of the drawing-room was again opened, and a large 
man, in deep mourning, appeared at it, entering and shutting 
it himself without speaking. A ghost could not more have 
scared me, when I discovered by its glitter on the black, a star! 
The general disorder had prevented his being seen, except by 

myself, who was always on the watch, till Miss P , turning 

round, exclaimed, "The king, aunt! the king!" 

mercy! thought I, that I were but out of the room ! Which 
way shall I escape? and how pass him unnoticed? There is but 
the single door at which he'entered, in the room! Every one 

scampered out of the way, — Miss P , to stand next the 

door, Mr. Bernard Dewes to a corner opposite it; his little girl 
clung to me; and Mrs. Delany advanced to meet his Majesty, 
who, after quietly looking on till she saw him, approached and 
inquired how she did. He then spoke to Mr. Bernard, whom he 
had already met two or three times here. 

1 had now retreated to the wall, and purposed gliding softly, 
though speedily, out of the room ; but before I had taken a single 
step, the king, in a loud whisper to Mrs. Delany, said, "Is that 
Miss Burney?" — and on her answering "Yes, sir," he bowed, 
and with a countenance of the most perfect good humor, came 
close up to me. A most profound reverence on my part arrested 
the progress of my intended retreat. 

"How long have you been come back, Miss Burney?" 



DIARY AND LETTERS 515 

"Two days, sir." 

Unluckily he did not hear me, and repeated his question; and 
whether the second time he heard me or not, I don't know, but 
he made a little civil inclination of his head, and went back to 
Mrs. Delany. . . . 

A good deal of talk then followed about his own health, and 
the extreme temperance by which he preserved it. The fault 
of his constitution, he said, was a tendency to excessive fat, 
which he kept, however, in order by the most vigorous exercise 
and the strictest attention to a simple diet. When Mrs. Delany 
was beginning to praise his forbearance, he stopped her. 

"No, no!" he cried. "'T is no virtue; I only prefer eating 
plain and little, to growing diseased and infirm." 

During this discourse I stood quietly in the place where he 
had first spoken to me. His quitting me so soon, and conversing 
freely and easily with Mrs. Delany, proved so delightful a relief 
to me that I no longer wished myself away; and the moment my 
first panic from the surprise was over, I diverted myself with a 
thousand ridiculous notions of my own situation. The Christ- 
mas games we had been showing Miss Dewes, it seemed as if 
we were still performing, as none of us thought it proper to 
move, though our manner of standing reminded one of "Puss 
in the corner." Close to the door was posted Miss P ; oppo- 
site her, close to the wainscot, stood Mr. Dewes; at just an 
equal distance from him, close to a window, stood myself; Mrs. 
Delany, though seated, was at the opposite side to Miss 

P ; and his Majesty kept pretty much in the middle of the 

room. The little girl, who kept close to me, did not break the 
order, and I could hardly help expecting to be beckoned with a 
"Puss! puss! puss!" to change places with one of my neighbors. 
This idea afterwards gave way to another more pompous. It 
seemed to me we were acting a play. There is something so 
little like common and real life, in everybody's standing, while 
talking, in a room full of chairs, and standing, too, so aloof 
from each other, that I almost thought myself upon a stage, 
assisting in the representation of a tragedy, — in which the 
king played his own part of the king; Mrs. Delany that of a 
venerable confidante; Mr. Dewes, his respectful attendant; Miss 
P , a suppliant virgin, waiting encouragement to bring for- 
ward some petition; Miss Dewes, a young orphan, intended tO' 



5i6 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

move the royal compassion; and myself, a very solemn, sober, 
and decent mute. 

These fancies, however, only regaled me while I continued a 
quiet spectator, and without expectation of being called into 
play. But the king, I have reason to think, meant only to give 
me time to recover from my first embarrassment; and I feel 
myself infinitely obliged to his good breeding and considera- 
tion, which perfectly answered, for before he returned to me I 
was entirely recruited. 

To go back to my narration. When the discourse upon 
health and strength was over, the king went up to the table, 
and looked at a book of prints from Claude Lorraine, which had 
been brought down for Miss Dewes; but Mrs. Delany, by mis- 
take, told him they were for me. He turned over a leaf or two, 
and then said, — "Pray, does Miss Burney draw, too?" The 
too was pronounced very civilly. 

"I beheve not, sir," answered Mrs. Delany. "At least she 
does not tell." 

" Oh ! " cried he, laughing, " that 's nothing ! She is not apt to 
tell; she never does tell, you know! Her father told me that 
himself. He told me the whole history of her Evelina. And I 
shall never forget his face when he spoke of his feelings at first 
taking up the book! — he looked quite frightened, just as if he 
was doing it that moment 1 I never can forget his face while I 
live!" Then, coming up close to me, he said, "But what? 
what? How was it?" 

"Sir," cried I. not well understanding him. 

"How came you — how happened it? What? what?" 

"That was only, sir, only because — " 

I hesitated most abominably, not knowing how to tell him a 
long story, and growing terribly confused at these questions. 
. . . The What ! was then repeated with so earnest a look that, 
forced to say something, I stammeringly answered, — 

" I thought, sir, — it would look very well in print!" 

I do really flatter myself this is the silliest speech I ever 
made! I am quite provoked with myself for it; but a fear of 
laughing made me eager to utter anything, and by no means 
conscious, till I had spoken, of what I was saying. 

. . . The sermon of the day before was then talked over. 
Mrs. Delany had not heard it, and the king said it was no great 



DIARY AND LETTERS 517 

loss. He asked me what I had thought of it, and we agreed per- 
fectly, to the no great exaltation of poor Dr. L . 

Some time afterwards, the king said he found by the news- 
papers that Mrs. Clive was dead. Do you read the newspapers? 
thought I. Oh, king! you must then have the most unvexing 
temper in the world not to run wild. 

This led on to more players. He was sorry, he said, for Hen- 
derson, and the more as Mrs. Siddons wished to have him play 
at the same house with herself. Then Mrs. Siddons took her 
turn, and with the warmest praise. 

" I am an enthusiast for her," cried the king, " quite an 
enthusiast. I think there was never any player in my time so 
excellent — not Garrick himself; I own it ! " Then, coming close 
to me, who was silent, he said, "What? what?" — meaning, 
what say you? But I still said nothing. I could not concur 
where I thought so differently, and to enter into an argument 
was quite impossible ; for every little thing I said the king list- 
ened to with an eagerness that made me always ashamed of its 
insignificancy. And, indeed, but for that I should have talked 
to him with much greater fluency, as well as ease. 

From players he went to plays, and complained of the great 
want of good modern comedies, and of the extreme immorality 
of most of the old ones. 

*' And they pretend," cried he, " to mend them; but it is not 
possible. Do you think it is? — what?" 

" No, sir, not often, I believe. The fault commonly lies in the 
very foundation." 

" Yes, or they might mend the mere speeches; but the char- 
acters are all bad from the beginning to the end." 

Then he specified several; but I had read none of them, and 
consequently could say nothing about the matter, till at last 
he came to Shakespeare. 

"Was there ever," cried he, " such stuff as great part of Shake- ) y 
speare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? 
What ? Is there not sad stuff ? What ? what ? " 

" Yes, indeed, I think so, sir, though mixed with such excel- 
lences that — " 

" Ohl" cried he, laughing good-humoredly, " I know it is not 
to be said! but it's true. Only it's Shakespeare, and nobody 
dare abuse him." . . . 



5i8 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

[the trial of warren Hastings] 

February 13, 1788. 

In the middle was placed a large table, and at the head of it 
the seat for the Chancellor, and round it seats for the judges, 
the Masters in Chancery, the clerks, and all who belonged to 
the law; the upper end, and the right side of the room, was al- 
lotted to the peers in their robes; the left side to the bishops and 
archbishops. Immediately below the Great Chamberlain's box 
was the place allotted for the prisoner. On his right side was a 
box for his own counsel, on his left the box for the managers, 
or committee, for the prosecution; and these three most im- 
portant of all the divisions in the Hall were all directly adjoin- 
ing to where I was seated. . . . 

The business did not begin till near twelve o'clock. The 
opening to the whole then took place, by the entrance of the 
managers of the prosecution; all the company were already 
long in their boxes or galleries. I shuddered, and drew involun- 
tarily back, when, as the doors were flung open, I saw Mr. 
Burke, as Head of the Committee, make his solemn entry. He 
held a scroll in his hand, and walked alone, his brow knit with 
corroding care and deep laboring thought, — a brow how dif- 
ferent to that which had proved so alluring to my warmest 
admiration when first I met him ! so highly as he had been my 
favorite, so captivating as I had found his manners and conver- 
sation in our first acquaintance, and so much as I owed to his 
zeal and kindness to me and my affairs in its progress ! How did 
I grieve to behold him now the cruel prosecutor (such to me he 
appeared) of an injured and innocent man! 

Mr. Fox followed next, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Wyndham, 
Messrs. Anstruther, Grey, Adam, Michael Angelo Taylor, 
Pelham, Colonel North, Mr. Frederick Montagu, Sir Gilbert 
Elliot, General Burgoyne, Dudley Long, etc. They were all 
named over to me by Lady Claremont, or I should not have 
recollected even those of my acquaintance, from the shortness 
of my sight. 

When the committee box was filled, the House of Commons 
at large took their seats on their green benches, which stretched, 
as I have said, along the whole left side of the Hall. . . . Then 
began the procession, the clerks entering first, then the lawyers 



DIARY AND LETTERS 519 

according to their rank, and the peers, bishops, and officers, all 
in their coronation robes; concluding with the Princes of the 
Blood, — Prince WiUiam, son to the Duke of Gloucester, com- 
ing first, then the Dukes of Cumberland, Gloucester, and York, 
then the Prince of Wales; and the whole ending by the Chan- 
cellor, with his train borne. They then all took their seats. 

A sergeant-at-arms arose, and commanded silence in the 
court, on pain of imprisonment. Then some other officer, in a 
loud voice, called out, as well as I can recollect, words to this 
purpose: "Warren Hastings, Esquire, come forth! Answer to 
the charges brought against you; save your bail, or forfeit your 
recognizance!" Indeed I trembled at these words, and hardly 
could keep my place when I found Mr. Hastings was being 
brought to the bar. He came forth from some place imme- 
diately under the Great Chamberlain's box, and was preceded 
by Sir Francis Molyneux, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod; 
and at each side of him walked his bails, Messrs. Sullivan and 
Sumner. The moment he came in sight, which was not for full 
ten minutes after his awful summons, he made a low bow to the 
Chancellor and court facing him. I saw not his face, as he was 
directly under me. He moved on slowly, and, I think, sup- 
ported between his two bails, to the opening of his own box; 
there, lower still, he bowed again; and then, advancing to the 
bar, he leant his hands upon it, and dropped on his knees; but 
a voice in the same moment proclaiming he had leave to rise, he 
stood up almost instantaneously, and a third time profoundly 
bowed to the court. . . . 

The crier, I think it was, made, in a loud and hollow voice, a 
public proclamation, " that Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Gov- 
ernor-General of Bengal, was now on his trial for high crimes 
and misdemeanors, with which he was charged by the Commons 
of Great Britain; and that all persons whatsoever who had 
aught to allege against him were now to stand forth." ... J 

The interest of this trial was so much upon my mind that I 
have not kept even a memorandum of what passed from the 13th 
of February to the day when I went again to Westminster 
Hall. . . . The prisoner was brought in, and Mr. Burke began 
his speech. It was the second day of his harangue; the first I 
had not been able to attend. 



520 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

All I had heard of his eloquence, and all I had conceived of 
his great abilities, was more than answered by his performance. 
Nervous, clear, and striking was almost all that he uttered ; the 
main business, indeed, of his coming forth was frequently neg- 
lected, and not seldom wholly lost; but his excursions were so 
fanciful, so entertaining, and so ingenious, that no miscellane- 
ous hearer, like myself, could blame them. It is true he was 
unequal, but his inequaHty produced an effect which, in so long 
a speech, was perhaps preferable to greater 'consistency, since, 
though it lost attention in its falling off, it recovered it with 
additional energy by some ascent unexpected and wonderful. 
When he narrated, he was easy, flowing, and natural; when he 
declaimed, energetic, warm, and brilliant. The sentiments he 
interspersed were as nobly conceived as they were highly col- 
ored; his satire had a poignancy of wit that made it as enter- 
taining as it was penetrating. His allusions and quotations, as 
far as they were English and within my reach, were apt and in- 
genious; and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy, bursting 
forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, 
and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly 
new and perfectly irresistible. 

Were talents such as these exercised in the service of truth, 
unbiased by party and prejudice, how could we sufficiently ap- 
plaud their exalted possessor! But though frequently he made 
me tremble by his strong and horrible representations, his own 
violence recovered me, by stigmatizing his assertions with per- 
sonal ill-will and designing illiberality. Yet at times I confess, 
with all that I felt, wished, and thought concerning Mr. Hast- 
ings, the whirlwind of his eloquence nearly drew me into its 
vortex. . . . 

[boswell] 

October, 1790. 
The beautiful chapel of St. George, repaired and finished by 
the best artists at an immense expense, which was now opened 
after a very long shutting up for its preparations, brought in- 
numerable strangers to Windsor, and, among others, Mr. Bos- 
well. This I heard, in my way to the chapel, from Mr. Turbu- 
lent,^ who overtook me, and mentioned having met Mr. Boswell 
at the Bishop of Carlisle's the evening before. He proposed 

1 A pseudonym for La Guiffardiere, French reader to the Queen. 



DIARY AND LETTERS 521 

bringing him to call upon me; but this I declined, certain how 
little satisfaction would be given here by the entrance of a man 
so famous for compiling anecdotes. But yet I really wished to 
see him again, for old acquaintance' sake,^ and unavoidable 

' [The record of Miss Burney's first meeting with Boswell is not found in the Diary, 
but in the Memoirs of her father, written in her old age and published 1832. Though 
not strictly, therefore, a part of eighteenth-century literature, it is too pertinent not to 
be reproduced:] 

As Mr. Boswell was at Streatham only upon a morning visit, a collation was ordered 
to which all were assembled. Mr. Boswell was preparing to take a seat that he seemed, by 
prescription, to consider as his own, ne.xt to Dr. Johnson; but Mr. Seward, who was pres- 
ent, waved his hand for Mr. Boswell to move farther on, saying with a smile, "Mr. Bos- 
well, that seat is Miss Burney's." 

He stared, amazed. The asserted claimant was new and unknown to him, and he ap- 
peared by no means pleased to resign his prior rights. But after looking round for a min- 
ute or two, with an important air of demanding the meaning of the innovation, and re- 
ceiving no satisfaction, he reluctantly, almost resentfully, got another chair, and placed 
't at the back of the shoulder of Dr. Johnson; while this new and unheard-of rival quietly 
seated herself as if not hearing what was passing, for she shrank from the explanation that 
she feared might ensue, as she saw a smile stealing over every countenance, that of Dr. 
Johnson himself not excepted, at the discomfiture and surprise of Mr. Boswell. 

Mr. Boswell, however, was so situated as not to remark it in the Doctor; and of every 
one else, when in that presence, he was unobservant if not contemptuous. In truth, when 
he met Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything that went forward, 
lest he should miss the smallest sound from that voice to which he paid such exclusive, 
though merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it 
excited in Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he 
leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor, and his mouth dropped open to catch 
every syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but 
to be anxious not to miss a breathing, as if hoping from it, latently or mystically, some 
information. 

But when, in a few minutes, Dr. Johnson, whose eye did not follow him, and who had 
concluded him to be at the other end of the table, said something gayly and good-humor- 
edly, by the appellation of Bozzy, and discovered, by the sound of the reply, that Bozzy 
had planted himself, as closely as he could, behind and between the elbows of the new 
usurper and his own, the Doctor turned angrily round upon him, and, clapping his hand 
rather loudly upon his knee, said, in a tone of displeasure: "What do you do there, sir? 
Go to the table, sir!" 

Mr. Boswell instantly, and with an air of affright, obeyed; and there was something so 
unusual in such humble submission to so imperious a command, that another smile 
gleamed its way across every mouth, except that of the Doctor and of Mr. Boswell, who 
now, very unwillingly, took a distant seat. 

But, ever restless when not at the side of Dr. Johnson, he presently recollected some- 
thing that he wished to exhibit; and, hastily rising, was running away in its search, when 
the Doctor, calling after him, authoritatively said, "What are you thinking of, sir? Why 
do you get up before the cloth is removed? Come back to your place, sir!" 

Again, and with equal obsequiousness, Mr. Boswell did as he was bid; when the Doctor, 
pursing his lips not to betray rising risibility, muttered half to himself: "Running about 
in the middle of meals! One would take you for a Branghton! " [The name of a vulgar 
family in Miss Burney's Evelina.] 

"A Branghton, sir? " repeated Mr. Boswell, with earnestness. "What is a Branghton, 
sir?" 

"Where have you lived, sir?" cried the Doctor, laughing, " and what company have 
you kept, not to know that?" 

Mr. Boswell now, doubly curious, yet always apprehensive of falling into some disgrace 
with Dr. Johnson, said, in a low tone, which he knew the Doctor could not hear, to Mrs. 
Thrale: " Pray, ma'am, what's a Branghton? Do me the favor to tell me! Is it some ani- 
mal hereabouts? " 



522 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

amusement from his oddity and good-humor, as well as respect 
for the object of his constant admiration, my revered Dr. John- 
son. I therefore told Mr. Turbulent I should be extremely glad 
to speak with him after the service was over. 

Accordingly, at the gate of the choir Mr. Turbulent brought 
him to me. We saluted with mutual glee. His comic-serious 
face and manner have lost nothing of their wonted singularity, 
nor yet have his mind and language, as you will soon confess. 
... I asked him about Mr. Burke's book. "Oh," cried he, "it 
will come out next week; 'tis the first book in the world, except 
my own, and that's coming out also very soon; only I want 
your help." 

"My help?" 

"Yes, madam, you must give me some of your choice little 
notes of the Doctor's; we have seen him long enough upon 
stilts; I want to show him in a new light. Grave Sam, and great 
Sam, and solemn Sam, and learned Sam — all these he has 
appeared over and over. Now I want to entwine a wreath of 
the graces across his brow; I want to show him as gay Sam, 
agreeable Sam, pleasant Sam; so you must help me with some 
of his beautiful billets to yourself." 

I evaded this by declaring I had not any stores at hand. He 
proposed a thousand curious expedients to get at them, but I 
was invincible. . . . He then told me his Lije of Dr. Johnson 
was nearly printed, and took a proof-sheet out of his pocket to 
show me, with crowds passing and repassing, knowing me well, 
and staring well at him ; for we were now at the iron rails of the 
Queen's Lodge. I stopped; I could not ask him in. I saw he ex- 
pected it, and was reduced to apologize, and tell him I must 
attend the Queen immediately. . . . Finding he had no chance 
for entering, he stopped me again at the gate, and said he would 
read me a part of his work. There was no refusing this; and he 
began, with a letter of Dr. Johnson to himself. He read it in 
strong imitation of the Doctor's manner, — very well, and not 

Mrs. Thrale only heartily laughed, but without answering, as she saw one of her guests 
uneasily fearful of an explanation. But Mr. Seward cried: "I'll tell you, Bos well, I'll tell 
you, if you will walk with me into the paddock; only let us wait till the table is cleared, or 
I shall be taken for a Branghton too!" 

They soon went off together, and Mr. Boswell, no doubt, was fully informed of the road 
that had led to the usurpation by which he had thus been annoyed. But the Branghton 
fabricator took care to mount to her chamber ere they returned, and did not come down 
till Mr. Boswell was gone. 



DIARY AND LETTERS 523 

caricature. But Mrs. Schwellenberg was at her window, a 
crowd was gathering to stand round the rails, and the king and 
queen and royal family now approached from the Terrace. I 
made a rather quick apology, and, with a step as quick as my 
now weakened limbs have left in my power, I hurried to my 
apartment. 

June 5, 1791. 

[Mr. Turbulent] had been reading, hke all the rest of the 
world, Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, and the preference there 
expressed of Mrs. Lennox to all other females had filled him 
with astonishment, as he had never even heard her name. 
These occasional sallies of Dr. Johnson, uttered from local 
causes and circumstances, but all retailed verbatim by Mr. 
Boswell, are filling all sorts of readers with amaze, except the 
small party to whom Dr. Johnson was known, and who, by ac- 
quaintance with the power of the moment over his unguarded 
conversation, know how little of his solid opinion was to be 
gathered from his accidental assertions. 

... I regretted not having the strength to read this work 
to her Majesty myself. It was an honor I should else have cer- 
tainly received; for so much wanted clearing! so little was un- 
derstood ! However, the Queen frequently condescended to read 
over passages and anecdotes which perplexed or offended her, 
and there were none I had not a fair power to soften or to jus- 
tify. Dear and excellent Dr. Johnson! I have never forgot nor 
neglected his injunction given me when he was ill, — to stand 
by him and support him, and not hear him abused when he was 
no more, and could not defend himself! But little — little did 
I think it would ever fall to my lot to vindicate him to his king 
and queen. 

[burke] 

June 18, 1792. 

... At length Mr. Burke appeared, accompanied by Mr. 
Elliot. He shook hands with my father as soon as he had paid 
his devoirs to Mrs. Crewe, but he returned my curtsey with so 
distant a bow that I concluded myself quite lost with him, from 
my evident solicitude in poor Mr. Hastings's cause. I could not 
wish that less obvious, thinking as I think of it; but I felt infin- 
itely grieved to lose the favor of a man whom, in all other arti- 
cles, I so much venerate, and whom indeed I esteem and admire 



524 MADAME D'ARBLAY 

as the very first man of true genius now living in this country. 
. . . The moment I was named, to my great joy I found Mr. 
Burke had not recollected me. He is more near-sighted, con- 
siderably, than myself. 

"Miss Burney!" he now exclaimed, coming forward, and 
quite kindly taking my hand, "I did not see you." And then 
he spoke very sweet words of the meeting, and of my looking 
far better than "while I was a courtier," and of how he rejoiced 
to see that I so little suited that station. . . , After this my 
father joined us, and politics took the lead. He spoke then with 
an eagerness and a vehemence that instantly banished the 
graces, though it redoubled the energies, of his discourse. 

" The French Revolution," he said, "which began by author- 
izing and legalizing injustice, and which by rapid steps had pro- 
ceeded to every species of despotism except owning a despot, 
was now menacing all the universe and all mankind with the 
most violent concussion of principle and order." My father 
heartily joined, and I tacitly assented to his doctrines, though 
I feared not with his fears. 

One speech I must repeat, for it is explanatory of his conduct, 
and nobly explanatory. When he had expatiated upon the pre- 
sent dangers, even to English liberty and property, from the 
contagion of havoc and novelty, he earnestly exclaimed, "This 
it is that has made me an abettor and supporter of kings! 
Kings are necessary, and if we would preserve peace and pros- 
perity, we must preserve them. We must all put our shoulders 
to the work! Ay, and stoutly, too!" 

This subject lasted till dinner. At dinner Mr. Burke sat next 
Mrs. Crewe, and I had the happiness to be seated next Mr. 
Burke, and my other neighbor was his amiable son. The dinner, 
and the dessert when the servants were removed, were delight- 
ful. How I wish my dear Susanna and Fredy could meet this 
wonderful man when he is easy, happy, and with people he cor- 
dially likes! But pohtics, even on his own side, must always 
be excluded; his irritability is so terrible on that theme that it 
gives immediately to his face the expression of a man who is 
going to defend himself from murderers. . . . 



4j 

0^ 



WILLIAM COWPER 
LETTERS 

[Cowper's Letters were first published, very incompletely, in connection 
with his Life by Hayley. The collection has been increased at various 
times, until the complete edition by Thomas Wright in 1904. Practically 
all the letters were written from the poet's quiet home at Olney; the 
larger number are addressed to Rev. John Newton, the evangelical clergy- 
man with whom Cowper wrote the Olney Hymns, and Rev. William Un- 
win, son of the Mrs. Unwin with whom he made his home. Some of the 
most agreeable, again, were addressed to his cousin Lady Hesketh.] 

10 MRS. COWPER 

October 20, 1766. 

My DEAR Cousin: 

... I am obliged to you for the interest you take in my wel- 
fare, and for your inquiring so particularly after the manner in 
which my time passes here. As to amusements, I mean what 
the world calls such, we have none; the place indeed swarms 
with them, and cards and dancing are the professed business of 
almost all the gentle inhabitants of Huntingdon. We refuse to 
take part in them, or to be accessories to this way of murdering 
our time, and by so doing have acquired the name of Method- 
ists. Having told you how we do not spend our time, I will 
next say how we do. We breakfast commonly between eight 
and nine; till eleven, we^read either the Scripture or the ser- 
mons of some faithful preacher of those holy mysteries; at 
eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here twice 
every day; and from twelve to three we separate and amuse 
ourselves as we please. During that interval I either read in 
my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. 
We seldom sit an hour after dinner, but if the weather permits 
adjourn to the garden, where with Mrs. Unwin and her son I 
have generally the pleasure of religious conversation till tea- 
thrie. If it rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse 
\s^;l in doors, or sing some h>Tnns of Martin's collection, and 
by he help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord make up a tolerable 
concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are the best and most 



526 WILLIAM COWPER 

musical performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good 
earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally 
traveled about four miles before we see home again. When the 
days are short, we make this excursion in the former part of the 
day, between church-time and dinner. At night we read and 
converse, as before, till supper, and commonly finish the even- 
ing either with hymns or a sermon; and last of all the family 
are called to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life as this 
is consistent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are 
all happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. Mrs. 
Unwin has almost a maternal affection for me, and I have 
something very like a filial one for her; and her son and I are 
brothers. Blessed be the God of our salvation for such com- 
panions, and for such a life; above all, for a heart to like it. . . . 

TO REV. WILLIAM UNWIN 

October 31, 1779. 

. . . I have been well entertained with Johnson's biographies, 
for which I thank you ; with one exception, and that a swingeing 
one, I think he has acquitted himself with his usual good sense 
and sufficiency. His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the 
last degree.^ A pensioner is not likely to spare a republican; 
and the Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his royal patron 
of the sincerity of his monarchical principles, has belabored 
that great poet's character with the most industrious cruelty. 
As a man, he has hardly left him the shadow of one good qual- 
ity. Churlishness in his private life, and a rancorous hatred of 
everything royal in his public, are the two colors with which he 
has smeared all the canvas. If he had any virtues, they are not 
to be found in the Doctor's picture of him; and it is well for 
Milton that some sourness in his temper is the only vice with 
which his memory has been charged; it is evident enough that, 
if his biographer could have discovered more, he would not 
have spared him. As a poet, he has treated him with severity 
enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful 
feathers out of his Muse's wing, and trampled them under his 
great foot. He has passed sentence of condemnation upon 
Lycidas, and has taken occasion from that charming poem to 
expose to ridicule (what is indeed ridiculous enough) the chi' ' 

1 See page 387, above. 



LETTERS 527 

ish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the 
prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the de- 
scription, the sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of 
antiquity that prevails in it, go for nothing. I am convinced, 
by the way, that he has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it 
was stopped by prejudice against the harmony of Milton's. 
Was there ever anything so delightful as the music of the Para- 
dise Lost! It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and 
deepest tones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance 
of the Dorian flute; variety without end, and never equaled, 
unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or nothing 
to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the 
unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt 
it is, in the mouth of some readers, to degenerate into declama- 
tion. Oh! I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his pension 
jingle in his pocket! . . . 

January 5, 1782. 

... In the last Review, I mean in the last but one, I saw 
Johnson's critique upon Prior and Pope. I am bound to acqui- 
esce in his opinion of the latter, because it has always been my 
own. I could never agree with those who preferred him to 
Dryden; nor with others (I have known such, and persons of 
taste and discernment too) who could not allow him to be a 
poet at all. He was certainly a mechanical maker of verses, and 
in every line he ever wrote we see indubitable marks of the 
most indefatigable industry and labor. Writers who find it 
necessary to make such strenuous and painful exertions are 
generally as phlegmatic as they are correct; but Pope was, in 
this respect, exempted from the common lot of authors of that 
class. With the unwearied application of a plodding Flemish 
painter, who draws a shrimp with the most minute exactness, 
he had all the genius of one of the first masters. Never, I be- 
lieve, were such talents and such drudgery united. But I 
admire Dryden most, who has succeeded by mere dint of 
genius, and in spite of a laziness and carelessness almost pecu- 
liar to himself. His faults are numberless, but so are his beau- 
ties. His faults are those of a great man, and his beauties are 
such (at least sometimes) as Pope, with all his touching and 
retouching, could never equal. So far, therefore, I have no 
quarrel with Johnson. But I cannot subscribe to what he says 



528 WILLIAM COWPER 

of Prior. In the first place, though my memory may fail me, I 
do not recollect that he takes any notice of his Solomon, — in 
my mind the best poem, whether we consider the subject of it 
or the execution, that he ever wrote. In the next place, he con- 
demns him for introducing Venus and Cupid into his love- 
verses, and concludes it impossible his passion could be sincere, 
because when he would express it he has recourse to fables. But 
when Prior wrote, those deities were not so obsolete as now. His 
contemporary writers, and some that succeeded him, did not 
think them beneath their notice. ... I admire Johnson as a 
man of great erudition and sense; but when he sets himself up 
for a judge of writers upon the subject of love, a passion which 
I suppose he never felt in his life, he might as well think him- 
self qualified to pronounce upon a treatise on horsemanship, or 
the art of fortification. , . . 

TO REV. JOHN NEWTON 

July 27, 1783. 

My dear Friend : You cannot have more pleasure in receiv- 
ing a letter from me than I should find in writing it, were it 
not almost impossible in such a place to find a subject. 

I live in a world abounding with incidents, upon which many 
grave and perhaps some profitable reflections might be made ; 
but those incidents never reaching my unfortunate ears, both 
the entertaining narrative and the reflection it might suggest 
are to me annihilated and lost. I look back to the past week, 
and say, what did it produce? I ask the same question of the 
week preceding, and duly receive the same answer from both, 
— nothing! A situation like this, in which I am as unknown to 
the world as I am ignorant of all that passes in it, in which I 
have nothing to do but to think, would exactly suit me, were 
my subjects of meditation as agreeable as my leisure is unin- 
terrupted. My passion for retirement is not at all abated, after 
so many years spent in the most sequestered state, but rather 
increased ; — a circumstance I should esteem wonderful to a 
degree not to be accounted for, considering the condition of my 
mind, did I not know that we think as we are made to think, and 
of course approve and prefer as Providence, who appoints the 
bounds of our habitation, chooses for us. Thus am I both free 
and a prisoner at the same time. The world is before me; I am 



LETTERS 



529 



not shut up in the Bastille; there are no moats about my castle, 
no locks upon my gates of which I have not the key; but an 
invisible, uncontrollable agency, a local attachment, an in- 
clination more forcible than I ever felt, even to the place of my 
birth, serves me for prison walls, and for bounds which I cannot 
pass. ... So it is, and it is so because here is to be my abode, 
and because such is the appointment of Him that placed me in 
it. . . . 

TO REV. WILLIAM UNWIN 

September 29, 17S3. 

. . . By the way, what is your opinion of these air balloons? 
I am quite charmed with the discovery. Is it not possible — do 
you suppose — to convey such a quantity of inflammable air 
into the stomach and abdomen, that the philosopher, n*o longer 
gravitating to a centre, shall ascend by his own comparative 
levity, and never stop till he has reached the medium exactly 
in equilihrio with himself? May he not, by the help of a paste- 
board rudder attached to his posteriors, steer himself in that 
pure element with ease; and again, by a slow and gradual dis- 
charge of his aerial contents, recover his former tendency to the 
earth, and descend without the smallest danger or inconven- 
ience? These things are worth inquiry, and I dare say they will 
be inquired after as they deserve. The penncB non homini datcB^ 
are likely to be less regretted than they were; and perhaps a 
flight of academicians and a covey of fine ladies may be no 
uncommon spectacle in the next generation. A letter which 
appeared in the public prints last week convinces me that the 
learned are not without hopes of some such improvement upon 
this discovery. The author is a sensible and ingenious man, and, 
under a reasonable apprehension that the ignorant may feel 
themselves inclined to laugh upon a subject that affects himself 
with the utmost seriousness, with much good manners and 
management bespeaks their patience, suggesting many good 
consequences that may result from a course of experiments 
upon this machine; and amongst others, that it may be of use 
in ascertaining the shape of continents and islands, and the 
face of wide-extended and far distant countries, — an end not 
to be hoped for, unless by these means of extraordinary eleva- 
tion the human prospect may be immensely enlarged, and the 

' " Wings denied to men." 



530 WILLIAM COWPER 

philosopher, exalted to the skies, attain a view of the whole 
hemisphere at once. But whether he is to ascend by the mere 
inflation of his person, as hinted above, or whether in a sort 
of bandbox, supported upon balloons, is not yet apparent, 
nor — I suppose — even in his own idea perfectly decided. 

TO REV. JOHN NEWTON 

November 30, 1783. 

. . . Let our station be as retired as it may, there is no want 
of playthings and avocations, nor much need to seek them, 
in this world of ours. Business, or what presents itself to us 
under that knposing character, will find us out even in the still- 
est retreat, and plead its importance, however trivial in reality, 
as a just demand upon our attention. It is wonderful how, by 
means of such real or seeming necessities, my time is stolen 
away. I have just time to observe that time is short, and by the 
time I have made the observation, time is gone. I have won- 
dered in former days at the patience of the antediluvian world, 
— that they could endure a life almost millenary, with so little 
variety as seems to have fallen to their share . It is probable 
that they had much fewer employments than we. Their affairs 
lay in a narrower compass; their hbraries were indifferently 
furnished; philosophical researches were carried on with much 
less industry and acuteness of penetration; and fiddles, per- 
haps, were not even invented. How then could seven or eight 
hundred years of life be supportable? I have asked this ques- 
tion formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it; but I think I can 
answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand years be- 
fore Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I wor- 
ship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's milk, 
and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to my 
bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, 
having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all the 
feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them. The morning is 
thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it is become necessary 
that I should dine. I dig up my roots; I wash them; I boil 
them ; I find them not done enough ; I boil them again ; my wife 
is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but in the mean time 
the fire goes out, and must be kindled again. All this is very 
amusing. I hunt; I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I 



LETTERS 531 

mend an old coat, or I make a new one. By this time the day 
is far spent; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, 
what with tilling the ground and eating the fruit of it, hunting 
and walking and running, and mending old clothes, and sleep- 
ing and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the pri- 
maeval world so much occupied as to sigh over the shortness of 
life, and to find at the end of many centuries that they had all 
slipped through his fingers, and were passed away like a shadow. 

September 18, 1784. 

. , . My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just 
upon the point of being turned out of it. ... I sit with all the 
windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the 
scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have 
known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I Hved in a 
hive I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in 
the neighborhood resort to a bed of mignonette opposite to the 
window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum 
which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as 
the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters 
are dehghtful, — at least in this country. I should not, per- 
haps, find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, 
very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I 
do not account musical, save and except always the braying of 
an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without 
one exception. I should not, indeed, think of keeping a goose 
in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlor for the sake 
of his melody; but a goose upon a common, or in a farm-yard, is 
no bad performer. And as to insects, if the black beetle, and 
beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no 
objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key 
they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to the bass of the humble 
bee, I admire them all. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a 
very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that 
such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear and 
the sounds with which — at least in a rural situation — it is 
almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the 
uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, 
and consequently upon the spirits; and if a sinful world had 
been filled with such as would have curdled the blood, and have 



532 WILLIAM COWPER 

made the sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not 
know that we should have had a right to complain. But now 
the fields, the woods, the gardens, have each their concert, and 
the ear of man is forever regaled by creatures who seem only to 
please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel 
are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by 
sounds for which they are solely indebted to its Author. There 
is somewhere in infinite space a world that does not roll within 
the precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scrip- 
tural, to suppose that there is music in heaven, in those dismal 
regions perhaps the reverse of it is found, — tones so dismal as 
to make woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate even 
despair. . . . 

TO LADY HESKETH 

December 15, 1785. 

... It would ill become me avowedly to point out the faults 
of Pope in a preface, and would be as impolitic as indecent. 
But to you, my dear, I can utter my mind freely. Let me pre- 
mise, however, that you answered the gentleman's inquiry 
whether in blank verse or not, to a marvel. It is even so; and 
let some critics say what they will, I aver it, and will forever 
aver it, that to give a just representation of Homer in rhyme 
is a natural impossibility. Now for Pope himself: I will allow 
his whole merit. He has written a great deal of very musical 
and sweet verse in his translation of Homer, but his verse is 
not universally such; on the contrary, it is often lame, feeble, 
and flat. He has, besides, occasionally a felicity of expression 
peculiar to himself; but it is a felicity purely modern, and has 
nothing to do with Homer. Except the Bible, there never was 
in the world a book so remarkable for that species of the sub- 
bllme that owes its very existence to simplicity, as the works of 
Homer. He is always nervous, plain, natural. I refer you to 
your own knowledge of his copyist for a decision upon Pope's 
merits in these particulars. The garden in all the gayety of 
June is less flowery than his translation. Metaphors of which 
Homer never dreamt, which he did not seek, and which prob- 
ably he would have disdained if he had found, follow each other 
in quick succession like the sHding pictures in a show box. 
Homer is, on occasions that call for such a style, the easiest and 
most familiar of writers; a circumstance that escaped Pope 



LETTERS 533 

entirely, who takes most religious care that he shall everywhere 
strut in buckram. . . . In short, my dear, there is hardly any- 
thing in the world so unlike another, as Pope's version of 
Homer to the original. Give me a great corking-pin, that I may 
stick your faith ,upon my sleeve. There — it is done! Now as- 
sure yourself, upon the credit of a man who made Homer much 
his study in his youth, and who is perhaps better acquainted 
with Pope's translation of him than almost any man, having 
twenty-five years ago compared them with each other Hne by 
line throughout, — upon the credit of a man, too, who would not 
for the world deceive you in the smallest matter, — that Pope 
never entered into the spirit of Homer, that he never translated 
him, — I had almost said, did not understand him ; many pas- 
sages it is Hterally true he did not. Why, when he first entered 
on his task, did he (as he did, by his own confession) forever 
dream that he was wandering in unknown ways, that he was 
lost upon heaths and forests, and awoke in terror? I will tell 
you, my dear; his dreams were emblems of his waking experi- 
ence ; and I am mistaken if I could not go near to prove that at 
his first setting out he knew very little of Greek, and was never 
an adept in it, to the last. . . . 



/ 



THE MONTHLY REVIEW 
December, 1786 

[This journal, the earliest of English critical reviews, was founded by 
the bookseller Ralph Griffiths, who conducted it till his death, in 1803. It 
was Whig and nonconformist in attitude; see Dr. Johnson's remark com- 
paring it and its Tory rival (founded 1756) The Critical Review, quoted by 
Boswell, page 650, below. The present extract is reproduced both for its 
interest as exemplifying the attitude of the Monthly toward a new poet, 
and its connection with the earliest volume of Burns's poems.] 

Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns. 8vo. Kilmar- 
nock. 1786. 

Poeta nascitur nonfit is an old maxim, the truth- of which has 
been generally admitted; and although it be certain that in 
modern times many verses are manufactured from the brain of 
their authors with as much labor as the iron is drawn into form 
under the hammer of the smith, and require to be afterwards 
smoothed by the file with as much care as the burnishers of 
Sheffield employ to give the last finish to their wares, yet after 
all these verses, though ever so smooth, are nothing but verses, 
and have no geniune title to the name of Poems. The humble 
bard whose work now demands our attention cannot claim a 
place among these polished versifiers. His simple strains, art- 
less and unadorned, seem to flow without effort from the native 
feehngs of the heart. They are always nervous, sometimes 
inelegant, often natural, simple, and sublime. The objects that 
have obtained the attention of the author are humble; for he 
himself, born in a low station, and following a laborious em- 
ployment, has had no opportunity of observing scenes in the 
higher walks of fife. Yet his verses are sometimes struck off with 
a delicacy and artless simplicity that charms like the bewitch- 
ing though irregular touches of a Shakespeare. 

We much regret that these poems are written in some meas- 
ure in an unknown tongue, which must deprive most of our 
readers of the pleasure they would otherwise naturally create, 
being composed in the Scottish dialect, which contains many 
words that are altogether unknown to an English reader. Be- 



POEMS BY ROBERT BURNS 535 

side, they abound with allusions to the modes of life, opinions, 
and ideas of the people in a remote corner of the country, which 
would render many passages obscure, and consequently unin- 
teresting, to those who perceive not the forcible accuracy of 
the picture of the objects to which they allude. This work, 
therefore, can only be fully relished by the natives of the part 
of the country where it was produced; but by such of them as 
have a taste sufficiently refined to be able to relish the beauties 
of nature, it cannot fail to be highly prized. 

By what we can collect from the poems themselves, and 
the short preface to them, the author seems to be struggHng 
with poverty, though cheerfully supporting the fatigues of a 
laborious employment. He thus speaks of himself in one of the 
poems : — 

The star that rules my luckless lot 

Has fated me the russet coat, 

And damn'd my fortune to the groat; 
But, in requite, 

Has blessed me with a random shot 
Of country wit. ... 

"None of the following works "(:jve are told in the Preface) 
"were ever composed with a view to the press. To amuse him- 
self with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and 
fatigues of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings, the 
loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears in his own breast; to find 
some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an 
alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind — these were 
his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found 
poetry its own reward." 

These poems are chiefly in the comic strain. Some are of the 
descriptive cast, particularly Hallow-e'en, which contains a 
lively picture of the magical tricks that still are practiced in the 
country at that season. It is a valuable relic which, like Virgil's 
eighth Eclogue, will preserve the memory of these simple in- 
cantations long after they would otherwise have been lost. It 
is very properly accompanied with notes explaining the circum- 
stances to which the poem alludes. Sometimes the poems are 
in the elegiac strain, among which class the reader will find 
much of nature in the lines to a Mouse, on turning up her nest 
with the plough, in November, 1785, and those to a Moun- 



536 THE MONTHLY REVIEW 

tain Daisy, on turning one down with the plough, in April, 
1786 

The modern ear will be somewhat disgusted with the measure 
of many of these pieces, which is faithfully copied from that 
which was most in fashion among the ancient Scottish bards, 
but hath been — we think with good reason — laid aside by 
later poets. The versification is, in general, easy, and it seems 
to have been a matter of indifference to our author in what 
measure he wrote. But if ever he should think of offering any- 
thing more to the public, we are of opinion his performances 
would be more highly valued were they written in measures less 
antiquated. 

The few songs, odes, dirges, etc., in this collection are very 
poor in comparison of the other pieces. The author's mind is 
not sufficiently stored with brilliant ideas to succeed in that Hne. 

In justice to the reader, however, as well as the author, we 
must observe that this collection may be compared to a heap 
of wheat carelessly winnowed. Some grain of a most excellent 
quaUty is mixed with a little chaff and half-ripened corn. How 
many splendid volumes of poems come under our review, in 
which, though the mere chaff be carefully separated, not a sin- 
gle atom of perfect grain can be found, all being light and in- 
sipid! We never reckon our task fatiguing when we can find, 
even among a great heap, a single pearl of price; but how piti- 
able is our lot when we must toil and toil, and can find nothing 
but tiresome uniformity, with neither fault to rouse nor beauty 
to animate the jaded spirits! 



EDWARD GIBBON 

THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF 
THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

1776-88 

[This work, the chief history of the century , whether regarded as a work 
of learning or of literature, began to appear in 1776, and the sixth and 
last volume was published on the author's fifty-first birthday, April 27, 
1788. For his own account of the inception and completion of the History, 
see the extracts from the Memoirs, pages545-6, below. The present extract 
is from the opening of Volume V; in presenting a sketch of the contents of 
that and the final volume, it well exemplifies Gibbon's panoramic method.] 

CHAPTER XLVIII 

I HAVE now deduced from Trajan to Constantine, from Con- 
stantine to Heraclius, the regular series of the Roman emperors; 
and faithfully exposed the prosperous and adverse fortunes of 
their reigns. Five centuries of the decline and fall of the empire 
have already elapsed ; but a period of more than eight hundred 
years still separates me from the term of my labors, the taking 
of Constantinople by the Turks. Should I persevere in the 
same course, should I observe the same measure, a prolix and 
slender thread would be spun through many a volume, nor 
would the patient reader find an adequate reward of instruc- 
tion or amusement. At every step, as we sink deeper in the de- 
cline and fall of the Eastern Empire, the annals of each suc- 
ceeding reign would impose a more ungrateful and melancholy 
task. These annals must continue to repeat a tedious and uni- 
form tale of weakness and misery; the natural connection of 
causes and events would be broken by frequent and hasty 
transitions, and a minute accumulation of circumstances must 
destroy the light and effect of those general pictures which 
compose the use and ornament of a remote history. From the 
time of Heraclius the Byzantine theatre is contracted and 
darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by the 
laws of Justinian and the arms of BeHsarius, recedes on all 
sides from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of 



538 EDWARD GIBBON 

our inquiries, is reduced to a narrow corner of Europe, to the 
lonely suburbs of Constantinople; and the fate of the Greek 
empire has been compared to that of the Rhine, which loses 
itself in the sands before its waters can mingle in the ocean. 
The scale of dominion is diminished to our view by the dis- 
tance of time and place; nor is the loss of external splendor 
compensated by the nobler gifts of virtue and genius. In the 
last moments of her decay Constantinople was doubtless more 
opulent and prosperous than Athens at her most flourishing 
era, when a scanty sum of six thousand talents, or twelve hun- 
dred thousand pounds sterling, was possessed by twenty-one 
thousand male citizens of an adult age. But each of these citi- 
zens was a freeman who dared to assert the liberty of his 
thoughts, words, and actions; whose person and property were 
guarded by equal law; and who exercised his independent vote 
in the government of the republic. Their numbers seem to be 
multiplied by the strong and various discriminations of char- 
acter; under the shield of freedom, on the wings of emulation 
and vanity, each Athenian aspired to the level of the national 
dignity; from this commanding eminence some chosen spirits 
soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the chances of 
superior merit in a great and populous kingdom, as they are 
proved by experience, would excuse the computation of im- 
aginary millions. The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their 
allies do not exceed a moderate province of France or England ; 
but after the trophies of Salamis and Plataea, they expand in 
our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled 
under the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects of the 
Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both 
of Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject 
vices, which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity 
nor animated by the vigor of memorable crimes. The freemen 
of antiquity might repeat with generous enthusiasm the sen- 
tence of Homer, " that on the first day of his servitude the cap- 
tive is deprived of one half of his manly virtue." But the poet 
had only seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor could 
he foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihi- 
lated by the spiritual despotism, which shackles not only the 
actions but even the thoughts of the prostrate votary. By this 
double yoke the Greeks were oppressed under the successors of 



DECLINE AND FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE 539 

Heraclius; the tyrant, a law of eternal justice, was degraded by 
the vices of his subjects; and on the throne, in the camp, in the 
schools, we search, perhaps with fruitless diligence, the names 
and characters that may deserve to be rescued from oblivion. 
Nor are the defects of the subject compensated by the skill and 
variety of the painters. Of a space of eight hundred years, the 
four first centuries are overspread with a cloud interrupted by 
some faint and broken rays of historic light : in the lives of the 
emperors, from Maurice to Alexius, Basil the Macedonian has 
alone been the theme of a separate work; and the absence, or 
loss, or imperfection of contemporary evidence must be poorly 
supplied by the doubtful authority of more recent compilers. 
The four last centuries are exempt from the reproach of penury: 
and with the Comnenian family the historic muse of Constanti- 
nople again revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are 
without elegance or grace. A succession of priests or courtiers 
treads in each other's footsteps, in the same path of servitude 
and superstition; their views are narrow, their judgment is 
feeble or corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barren- 
ness, still ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the 
actors, and the manners of the times which they celebrate or 
deplore. The observation which has been applied to a man may 
be extended to a whole people, that the energy of the sword is 
communicated to the pen; and it will be found by experience 
that the tone of history will rise or fall with the spirit of the 
age. 

From these considerations I should have abandoned without 
regret the Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not 
reflected that the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively 
connected with the most splendid and important revolutions 
which have changed the state of the world. The space of the 
lost provinces was immediately replenished with new colonies 
and rising kingdoms: the active virtues of peace and war 
deserted from the vanquished to the victorious nations; and it 
is in their origin and conquests, in their rehgion and govern- 
ment, that we must explore the causes and effects of the decHne 
and fall of the Eastern empire. Nor will this scope of narrative, 
the riches and variety of these materials, be incompatible with 
the unity of design and composition. As, in his daily prayers, 
the Mussulman of Fez or Delhi still turns his face towards the 



540 EDWARD GIBBON 

Temple of Mecca, the historian's eye shall be always fixed on 
the city of Constantinople. The excursive line may embrace 
the wilds of Arabia and Tartary, but the circle will be ulti- 
mately reduced to the decreasing limit of the Roman mon- 
archy. 

On this principle I shall now establish the plan of the last 
two volumes of the present work. The first chapter will contain, 
in a regular series, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople 
during a period of six hundred years, from the days of Heraclius 
to the Latin conquest: a rapid abstract, which may be sup- 
ported by a general appeal to the order and text of the original 
historians. In this introduction I shall confine myself to the 
revolutions of the throne, the succession of families, the per- 
sonal characters of the Greek princes, the mode of their life and 
death, the maxims and influence of their domestic government, 
and the tendency of their reign to accelerate or suspend the 
downfall of the Eastern empire. Such a chronological review 
will serve to illustrate the various argument of the subsequent 
chapters; and each circumstance of the eventful story of the 
barbarians will adapt itself in a proper place to the Byzantine 
annals. The internal state of the empire, and the dangerous 
heresy of the Paulicians, which shook the East and enlightened 
the West, will be the subject of two separate chapters; but 
these inquiries must be postponed till our farther progress shall 
have opened the view of the world in the ninth and tenth cen- 
turies of the Christian era. After this foundation of Byzantine 
history, the following nations will pass before our eyes, and each 
will occupy the space to which it may be entitled by greatness 
or merit, or the degree of connection with the Roman world 
and the present age. I, The Franks; a general appellation 
which includes all the barbarians of France, Italy, and Ger- 
many, who were united by the sword and sceptre of Charle- 
magne. The persecution of images and their votaries separated 
Rome and Italy from the Byzantine throne, and prepared the 
restoration of the Roman empire in the West. II, The Arabs 
or Saracens. Three ample chapters will be devoted to this 
curious and interesting object. In the first, after a picture of 
the country and its inhabitants, I shall investigate the charac- 
ter of Mahomet; the character, religion, and success of the 
prophet. In the second I shall lead the Arabs to the conquest 



DECLINE AND FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE 541 

of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the provinces of the Roman 
empire; nor can I check their victorious career till they have 
overthrown the monarchies of Persia and Spain. In the third 
I shall inquire how Constantinople and Europe were saved by 
the luxury and arts, the division and decay, of the empire of the 
caliphs. A single chapter will include — III, The Bulgarians, 
IV, Hungarians, and, V, Russians, who assaulted by sea or 
by land the provinces and the capital; but the last of these, so 
important in their present greatness, will excite some curiosity 
in their origin and infancy. VI, The Normans; or rather the 
private adventures of that warlike people, who founded a power- 
ful kingdom in Apulia and Sicily, shook the throne of Constan- 
tinople, displayed the trophies of chivalry, and almost realized 
the wonders of romance. VII, The Latins; the subjects of the 
Pope, the nations of the West, who enlisted under the banner 
of the cross for the recovery or relief of the holy sepulchre. The 
Greek emperors were terrified and preserved by the myriads of 
pilgrims who marched to Jerusalem with Godfrey of Bouillon 
and the peers of Christendom. The second and third crusades 
trod in the footsteps of the first : Asia and Europe were mingled 
in a sacred war of two hundred years; and the Christian powers 
were bravely resisted and finally expelled by Saladin and the 
Mamelukes of Egypt. In these memorable crusades a fleet and 
army of French and Venetians were diverted from Syria to the 
Thracian Bosphorus: they assaulted the capital, they sub- 
verted the Greek monarchy; and a dynasty of Latin princes 
was seated near three-score years on the throne of Constantine. 
VIII, The Greeks themselves, during this period of captivity 
and exile, must be considered as a foreign nation ; the enemies, 
and again the sovereigns, of Constantinople. Misfortune had 
rekindled a spark of national virtue, and the imperial series may 
be continued with some dignity from their restoration to the 
Turkish conquest. IX, The Moguls and Tartars. By the 
arms of Zingis and his descendants, the globe was shaken from 
China to Poland and Greece ; the sultans were overthrown ; the 
caliphs fell, and the Caesars trembled on their throne. The vic- 
tories of Timour suspended above fifty years the final ruin of 
the Byzantine empire. X. I have already noticed the first 
appearance of the Turks; and the names of the fathers, of 
Seljuk and Othman, discriminate the two successive dynasties 



542 EDWARD GIBBON 

of the nation which emerged in the eleventh century from the 
Scythian wilderness. The former established a potent and 
splendid kingdom from the banks of the Oxus to Antioch and 
Nice, and the first crusade was provoked by the violation of 
Jerusalem and the danger of Constantinople. From an humble 
origin the Ottomans arose the scourge and terror of Christen- 
dom. Constantinople was besieged and taken by Mahomet II, 
and his triumph annihilates the remnant, the image, the title, 
of the Roman empire in the East. The schism of the Greeks 
will be connected with their last calamities and the restoration 
of learning in the Western world. I shall return from the cap- 
tivity of the new to the ruins of ancient Rome; and the vener- 
able name, the interesting theme, will shed a ray of glory on the 
conclusion of my labors. . . . 

MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS 

1796 

[These Memoirs appeared in the Misccllaneoiis Works of Gibbon, edited 
by his friend Lord Sheffield, two years after his death. Sheffield spoke of 
them as "a work which he seems to have projected with peculiar solici- 
tude and attention, and of which he left six different sketches, all in his 
own handwriting. One of these . . . ends at the time when he quitted 
Oxford; another at the year 1764, when he traveled to Italy; a third, at 
his father's death in 1770. A fourth, which he continued to a short time 
after his return to Lausanne in 1788, appears in the form of annals, much 
less detailed than the others. The two remaining sketches are still more 
imperfect. It is difficult to discover the order in which these several 
pieces were written, but there is reason to believe that the most copious 
was the last. From all these the following Memoirs have been carefully 
selected and put together." The allusion in the third of the extracts that 
follow is to the controversy aroused by the isth and i6th chapters of the 
first volume of the History, in which Gibbon undertook to explain the 
growth of Christianity from a rationalistic standpoint. The passages here 
reprinted will be found in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of the Memoirs, 
pages 50-59, 167, 201-205, 224-225, 239-244.] 

To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; 
and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am will- 
ing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months 
at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the 
most idle and unprofitable of my whole life. The reader will 
pronounce between the school and the scholar; but I cannot 



MEMOIRS 543 

affect to believe that Nature had disquahfied me for all literary 
pursuits. The specious and ready excuse of my tender age, 
imperfect preparation, and hasty departure may doubtless be 
alleged, nor do I wish to defraud such excuses of their proper 
weight. Yet in my sixteenth year I was not devoid of capacity 
or application; even my childish reading had displayed an early 
though blind propensity for books; and the shallow flood might 
have been taught to flow in a deep channel and a clear stream. 
In the disciphne of a well-constituted academy, under the guid- 
ance of skillful and vigilant professors, I should gradually have 
risen from translations to originals, from the Latin to the Greek 
classics, from dead languages to living science; my hours would 
have been occupied by useful and agreeable studies, the wan- 
derings of fancy would have been restrained, and I should have 
escaped the temptations of idleness which finally precipitated 
my departure from Oxford. 

Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the 
fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities, a ques- 
tion which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among 
their fanatic sons. In the meanwhile it will be acknowledged 
that these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of 
all the prejudices and infirmities of age. The schools of Oxford\ 
and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbar- 
ous science, and they are still tainted with the vices of their 
origin. Their primitive discipline was adapted to the educa- 
tion of priests and monks, and the government still remains in 
the hands of the clergy, an order of men whose manners are 
remote from the present world, and whose eyes are dazzled by 
the light of philosophy. The legal incorporation of these socie- 
ties by the charters of popes and kings had given them a mo- 
nopoly of the public instruction, and the spirit of monopolists 
is narrow, lazy, and oppressive; their work is more costly and 
less productive than that of independent artists, and the new 
improvements so eagerly grasped by the competition of freedom 
are admitted with slow and sullen reluctance in those proud 
corporations, above the fear of a rival and below the confession 
of an error. We may scarcely hope that any reformation will be 
a voluntary act; and so deeply rooted are they in law and pre- 
judice, that even the omnipotence of Parliament would shrink 
from an inquiry into the state and abuses of the two universi- 
ties. . . . 



544 EDWARD GIBBON 

In all the universities of Europe, excepting our own, the lan- 
guages and sciences are distributed among a numerous list of 
effective professors; the students, according to their taste, their 
calling, and their dihgence, apply themselves to the proper 
masters; and in the annual repetition of public and private lec- 
tures these masters are assiduously employed. Our curiosity 
may inquire what number of professors has been instituted at 
Oxford (for I shall now confine myself to my own university) . 
By whom are they appointed, and what may be the probable 
chances of merit or incapacity? How many are stationed to 
the three faculties, and how many are left for the liberal arts? 
What is the form, and what the substance, of their lessons? 
But all these questions are silenced by one short and singular 
answer : that in the University of Oxford the greater part of the 
public professors have for these many years given up altogether 
even the pretence of teaching. ... 

The fellows or monks of my time were decent, easy men, who 
supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder. Their days were 
filled by a series of uniform employments; the chapel and the 
hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, 
weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of 
reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their con- 
science, and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered 
on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the 
public. As a gentleman-commoner, I was admitted to the so- 
ciety of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of 
literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their 
discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college 
business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scan- 
dal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemper- 
ance of youth ; and their constitutional toasts were not expres- 
sive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover. . . . 
The example of the senior fellows could not inspire the under- 
graduates with a liberal spirit or studious emulation ; and I can- 
not describe, as I never knew, the discipline of college. Some 
duties may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars 
whose ambition aspired to the peaceful honors of a fellowship 
(ascribi quietis ordinihus . . . deorum),^ but no independent 
members were admitted below the rank of a gentleman-com- 

* "To be enrolled in the peaceful ranks of the gods." 



MEMOIRS 545 

moner, and our velvet cap was the cap of liberty. A tradition 
prevailed that some of our predecessors had spoken Latin de- 
clamations in the hall, but of this ancient custom no vestige 
remained. The obvious methods of public exercises and exam- 
inations were totally unknown, and I have never heard that 
either the president or the society interfered in the private 
economy of the tutors and their pupils. . . . 

Itwas at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing 
amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were 
singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of 
writing the Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. 
But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the 
city rather than the empire; and though my reading and re- 
flections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, 
and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously en- 
gaged in the execution of that laborious work. 

. . . Had I believed that the majority of English readers 
were so fondly attached even to the name and shadow of Chris- 
tianity, — had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the 
prudent would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensi- 
bility— I might perhaps have softened the two invidious chap- 
ters, which would create many enemies and conciliate few 
friends. But the shaft was shot, the alarm was sounded, and I 
could only rejoice that, if the voice of our priests was clamorous 
and bitter, their hands were disarmed from the powers of per- 
secution. I adhered to the wise resolution of trusting myself 
and my writings to the candor of the public, till Mr. Davies of 
Oxford presumed to attack, not the faith, but the fidehty of the 
historian. My Vindication, expressive of less anger than con- 
tempt, amused for a moment the busy and idle metropolis, and 
the most rational part of the laity, and even of the clergy, ap- 
pear to have been satisfied of my innocence and accuracy. I 
would not print this Vindication in quarto, lest it should be 
bound and preserved with the History itself. At the distance 
of twelve years, I calmly affirm my judgment of Davies, Chel- 
sum, etc. A victory over such antagonists was a sufficient 
humiHation. They, however, were rewarded in this world. 
Poor Chelsum was indeed neglected, and I dare not boast the 



546 EDWARD GIBBON 

making Dr. Watson a bishop, — he is a prelate of a large 
mind and liberal spirit; but I enjoyed the pleasure of giving 
a royal pension to Mr. Davies, and of collating Dr. Ap- 
thorpe to an archi -episcopal living. Their success encouraged 
the zeal of Taylor the Arian and Milner the Methodist, with 
many others whom it would be difficult to remember and tedi- 
ous to rehearse. The list of my adversaries, however, was 
graced with the more respectable names of Dr. Priestley, Sir 
David Dalrymple, and Dr. White; and every polemic of either 
university discharged his sermon or pamphlet against the im- 
penetrable silence of the Roman historian. . . . I have praised, 
and I still praise, the eloquent sermons which were preached in 
St. Mary's pulpit at Oxford by Dr. White. If he assaulted me 
with some degree of illiberal acrimony, in such a place and be- 
fore such an audience he was obliged to speak the language of 
the country. I smiled at a passage in one of his private letters 
to Mr. Badcock: "The part where we encounter Gibbon must 
be brilliant and striking." In a sermon preached before the 
University of Cambridge, Dr. Edwards complimented a work 
"which can only perish with the language itself," and esteems 
the author a formidable enemy. He is, indeed, astonished that 
more learning and ingenuity has not been shown in the defense 
of Israel; that the prelates and dignitaries of the Church (alas, 
good man!) did not vie with each other whose stone should sink 
deepest in the forehead of this Goliah. . . . Let me frankly 
own that I was startled at the first discharge of ecclesiastical 
ordnance; but as soon as I found that this empty noise was mis- 
chievous only in the intention, my fear was converted into in- 
dignation, and every feeling of indignation or curiosity has 
long since subsided in pure and placid indifference. 

... I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: 
I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It 
was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, be- 
tween the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last 
lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After 
laying down my pen, I took several turns in a herceau, or cov- 
ered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the coun- 
try, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the 
sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from 



MEMOIRS 547 

the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the 
first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and per- 
haps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by 
the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and 
agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future 
date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and 
precarious. I will add two facts which have seldom occurred 
in the composition of six, or at least of five, quartos, i. My 
first rough manuscript, without any intermediate copy, has 
been sent to the press. 2. Not a sheet has been seen by any 
human eyes, excepting those of the author and the printer. 
The faults and the merits are exclusively my own. 

. . . When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I 
must acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery 
of life. The far greater part of the globe is overspread with bar- 
barism or slaver}^ In the civilized world the most nmnerous 
class is condemned to ignorance and poverty; and the double 
fortune of my birth in a free and enlightened country, in an 
honorable and wealthy family, is the lucky chance of an unit 
against millions. The general probability is about three to one 
that a new-born infant will not live to complete his fiftieth 
year. I have now passed that age, and may fairly estimate the 
present value of my existence in the threefold division of mind, 
body, and estate. 

I. The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a 
clear conscience-, unsulHed by the reproach or remembrance of 
an unworthy action. 

Hie miirus aheneus esto. 
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallesccre culpa.''- 

I am endowed with a cheerful temper, a moderate sensibility, 
and a natural disposition to repose rather than to activity; 
some mischievous appetites and habits have perhaps been 
corrected by philosophy or time. The love of study, a passion 
which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, 
each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and ra- 

1 " This be one's brazen wall, to feel no consciousness of guilt, nor grow pale through 
misconduct." 



548 EDWARD GIBBON 

tional pleasure, and I am not sensible of any decay of the men- 
tal faculties. The original soil has been highly improved by 
cultivation; but it may be questioned whether some flowers of 
fancy, some grateful errors, have not been eradicated with the 
roots of prejudice. 2. Since I have escaped from the long perils 
of my childhood, the serious advice of a physician has seldom 
been requisite. "The madness of superfluous health " I have 
never known; but my tender constitution has been fortified by 
time, and the inestimable gift of the sound and peaceful slum- 
bers of infancy may be imputed both to the mind and the body. 
3. 1 have already described the merits of my society and situa- 
tion; but these enjoyments would be tasteless or bitter if their 
possession were not assured by an annual and adequate supply. 
According to the scale of Switzerland I am a rich man; and I 
am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expense, and 
my expense is equal to my wishes. My friend Lord Sheflield 
has kindly relieved me from the cares to which my taste and 
temper are most adverse; shall I add, that since the failure of my 
first wishes I have never entertained any serious thoughts of a 
matrimonial connection? . . . 

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more, and 
our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may 
possibly be my last ; but the laws of probability, so true in gen- 
eral, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years. 
I shall soon enter into the period which, as the most agreeable 
of his long life, was selected by the judgment and experience of 
the sage Fontenelle. His choice is approved by the eloquent 
historian of nature,^ who fixes our moral happiness to the ma- 
ture season in which our passions are supposed to be calmed, 
our duties fulfilled, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune 
established on a solid basis. In private conversation that great 
and amiable man added the weight of his own experience; and 
this autumnal felicity might be exemplified in the lives of Vol- 
taire, Hume, and many other men of letters. I am far more 
inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. 
I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body; 
but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbrevia- 
tion of time and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a 
browner shade the evening of life. 

> Bufioa. 



MEMOIRS 549 

The proportion of a part to the whole is the only standard by 
which we can measure the length of our existence. At the age 
of twenty, one year is a tenth, perhaps, of the time which has 
elapsed within our consciousness and memory; at the age of 
fifty it is no more than the fortieth, and this relative value con- 
tinues to decrease till the last sands are shaken by the hand of 
death. This reasoning may seem metaphysical; but on a trial 
it will be found satisfactory and just. The warm desires, the 
long expectations of youth, are founded on the ignorance of 
themselves and the world ; they are gradually damped by time 
and experience, by disappointment or possession; and after the 
middle season the crowd must be content to remain at the foot 
of the mountain, while the few who have climbed the summit 
aspire to descend or expect to fall. In old age, the consolation 
of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who com- 
mence a new life in their children, the faith of enthusiasts who 
sing hallelujahs above the clouds, and the vanity of authors 
who presume the immortality of their name and writings. 






GILBERT WHITE 



THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF 

SELBORNE 

1789 

[This book, "the only work on natural history which has attained the 
rank of an English classic," had its origin in White's correspondence with 
other students of zoology, especially Thomas Pennant and Daines Bar- 
rington. The extracts that follow are from Letters xvi, xxii, XL, to Pen- 
nant, and Letters xiii, xxxviii, xliii, l to Barrington.] 

April 18, 1768. 

. . . I MAKE no doubt but there are three species of the willow- 
wrens; two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to pro- 
cure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and 
that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for 
the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note, the other a harsh, 
loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters 
of an inch longer, and weighs two drachms and a half, while the 
latter weighs but two; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than 
the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage 
that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two 
notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the 
spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my 
journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-colored; 
of the less, black. 

The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last 
Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 
this little bird, which seems to be close by though at a hundred 
yards distance, and when close at your ear is scarce any louder 
than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted 
with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 
hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a 
locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh 
when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most art- 
ful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, and will 
sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. . . . 



SELBORNE 551 

January 2, 1769. 

. . . There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 
more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker) , as it is a 
wonderful and curious creature; but I have always found that, 
though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, 
yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and 
I have for many a half-hour watched it as it sat with its under 
mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches 
usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an 
attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio Brit- 
ish Zoology. This bird is most punctual in beginning its song 
exactly at the close of day, — so exactly that I have known it 
strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Ports- 
mouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is 
still. It appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed 
by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe 
formed for sound, just as cats purr. You will credit me, I hope, 
when I assure you that, as my neighbors were assembled in an 
hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of 
these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little 
straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for 
many minutes; and we were all struck with wonder to find that 
the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a 
sensible vibration to the whole building! . . . 

September 2, 1774. 

. . . The note of the white-throat, which is continually re- 
peated, and often attended with odd gesticulations on the wing, 
is harsh and displeasing. These birds seem of a pugnacious dis- 
position; for they sing with an erected crest, and attitudes of 
rivalry and defiance; are shy and wild in breeding-time, avoid- 
ing neighborhoods, and haunting lonely lanes and commons, 
— nay, even the very tops of the Sussex downs, where there are 
bushes and covert. But in July and August they bring their 
broods into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc 
among the summer fruits. 

The black-cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and 
wild pipe; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his mo- 
tions are desultory. But when that bird sits calmly, and en- 
gages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet but inward 



552 GILBERT WHITE 

melody, and expresses great variety of soft and gentle modula- 
tions, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the 
nightingale excepted. Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and 
gardens; while they warble their throats are wonderfully dis- 
tended. 

The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like 
that of the white-throat ; some birds have a few more notes than 
others. Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, 
the cock sings from morning to night; he affects neighborhoods, 
and avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about 
houses. With us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole . . . 

April 12, 1772. ■ 

While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at the 
village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of 
writing to you. On the ist November I remarked that the old 
tortoise, formerly mentioned, began first to dig the ground in 
order to the forming its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on 
just beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground 
with its fore-feet, and throws it up over its back with its hind ; 
but the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding 
the hour-hand of a clock. Nothing can be more assiduous than 
this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing 
its great body into the cavity; but, as the noons of that sea- 
son proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually inter- 
rupted, and called forth by the heat in the middle of the day; 
and though I continued there till the 13th November, yet the 
work remained unfinished. Harsher weather, and frosty morn- 
ings, would have quickened its operations. 

No part of its behavior ever struck me more than the ex- 
treme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for, 
though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a 
loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain 
as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first 
sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner. If attended to, 
it becomes an excellent weather-glass; for as sure as it walks 
elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in 
a morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally a diur- 
nal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. 
... I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those 



SELBORNE 553 

that do it kind offices; for, as soon as the good old lady comes 
in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it 
hobbles towards its benefactress with awkward alacrity, but 
remains inattentive to strangers. Thus not only " the ox know- 
eth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," but the most 
abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that 
feeds it, and is touched with the feelings of gratitude. 

In about three days after I left Sussex, the tortoise retired 
into the ground under the hepatica. 

February 12, 1778. 

In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and 
hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. 
Many we have discovered that return the cry of a pack of dogs, 
the notes of a hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the 
melody of birds, very agreeably. But we were still at a loss for a 
polysyllabical articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had 
parted from his company in a summer evening walk, and was 
calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot 
where it might least be expected. At first he was much sur- 
prised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by 
some boy; but repeating his trials in several languages, and 
finding his respondent to be a very adroit polyglot, he then 
discerned the deception. 

This echo in an evening, before rural noises cease, would 
repeat ten syllables most articulately and distinctly, especially 
if quick dactyls were chosen. The last syllables of 

Tityre, tu patulcB recuhans — 

were as audibly and intelligibly returned as the first; and there 
is no doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, 
when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or 
two syllables more might have been obtained; but the distance 
rendered so late an experiment very inconvenient. 

Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best; for when we 
came to try its powers in slow, heavy, embarrassed spondees of 
the same number of syllables, — 

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens — 

we could perceive a return but of four or five. 
All echoes have some one place to which they are returned 



554 GILBERT WHITE 

stronger and more distinct than to any other; and that is 
always the place that lies at right angles with the object of 
repercussion, and is not too near nor too far off. Buildings, or 
naked rocks, re-echo much more articulately than hanging 
woods or vales, because in the latter the voice is as it were en- 
tangled and embarrassed in the covert, and weakened in the 
rebound. 

The true object of this echo, as we found by various experi- 
ments, is the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Gaily Lane, which 
measures in front forty feet, and from the ground to the eaves 
twelve feet. The true centrum phonicum, or just distance, is 
one particular spot in the king's field, in the path to Nore Hill, 
on the very brink of the steep balk above the hollow cartway. 
In this case there is no choice of distance; but the path, by 
mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot, 
because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker 
either retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be 
above or below the object. . . . 

Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally 
silent, though the object, or hop-kiln, remains. Nor is there any 
mystery in this defect ; for the field between is planted as a hop 
garden, and the voice of the speaker is totally absorbed and 
lost among the poles and entangled foliage of the hops. And 
when the poles are removed in autumn the disappointment is 
the same; because a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the 
purpose of shelter to the hop-ground, entirely interrupts the 
impulse and repercussion of the voice; so that till those ob- 
structions are removed, no more of its garrulity can be ex- 
pected. 

Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park 
or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at Kttle or no 
expense. For, whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, 
dog-kennel, or like structure, it would be only needful to erect 
this building on the gentle declivity of a hill, with a like rising 
opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps 
success might be the easier ensured could some canal, lake, or 
stream intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum he and 
his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening 
with the prattle of this loquacious nymph, of whose compla- 



SELBORNE 555 

cency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth 
of every individual of her sex, since she is 

gucB nee reiicere loquenti, 
Nee prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo} 

September 9, 1778. 

. . . No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety 
of expression, and so copious a language, as common poultry. 
Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a win- 
dow where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey 
with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a 
wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of 
disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready 
to lay, she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. 
Of all the occurrences of their life that of laying seems to be the 
most important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, 
than she rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the 
cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The 
tumult is not confined to the family concerned, but catches 
from yard to yard, and spreads to every homestead within 
hearing, till at last the whole village is in an uproar. As soon as 
a hen becomes a mother her new relation demands a new lan- 
guage; she then runs clucking and screaming about, and seems 
agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock has also a con- 
siderable vocabulary. If he finds food, he calls a favorite con- 
cubine to partake; and if a bird of prey passes over, with a 
warning voice he bids his family beware. The gallant chanti- 
cleer has, at command, his amorous phrases and his terms of 
defiance. But the sound by which he is best known is his crow- 
ing ; by this he has been distinguished in all ages as the coun- 
tryman's clock or larum, as the watchman that proclaims the 
divisions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly styles him — 

— the crested cock, whose clarion sounds 
The silent hours . . . 

April 21, 1780. 

The old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so 
often, is become my property. I dug it out of its winter dormi- 
tory in March last, when it was enough awakened to express its 

' "Answering echo, who has neither learned to keep silence when spoken to, nor to 
speak first herself." 



556 GILBERT WHITE 

resentment by hissing; and, packing it in a box with earth, 
carried it eighty miles in post-chaises. The rattle and hurry of 
the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out on 
a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden. 
However, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried 
itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed. As it will 
be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging 
my observations on its mode of life; and already perceive that, 
towards the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing place in 
the ground near its head, — requiring, I conclude, a freer 
respiration as it becomes more alive. This creature not only 
goes under the earth from the middle of November to the mid- 
dle of April, but sleeps great part of the summer; for it goes to 
bed in the longest days at four in the afternoon, and often does 
not stir in the morning till late. Besides, it retires to rest for 
every shower, and does not move at all in wet days. 

When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a 
matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a 
profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile 
that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two- 
thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor,' and be lost to all sen- 
sation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers. 

While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, 
with the thermometer at 50°, brought forth troops of shell- 
snails; and at the same juncture the tortoise heaved up the 
mould and put out its head, and the next morning came forth, 
as it were, raised from the dead, and walked about till four in 
the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence, a very amusing 
occurrence ! to see such a similarity of feelings between the two 
<f>epeoLKOL, — for so the Greeks call both the shell-snail and 
the tortoise. ... 

Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt 
to undervalue his abilities and depreciate his powers of instinct. 
Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, — 

Much too wise to walk into a well, 

and has so much discernment as not to fall down a haha, but to 
stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. 
Though he loves warm weather, he avoids the hot sun, be- 
cause his thick shell, when once heated, would, as the poet says 



SELBORNE 557 

of solid armor, "scald with safety." He therefore spends the 
more sultry hours under the umbrella of a large cabbage leaf, 
or amidst the waving forests of an asparagus bed. But, as he 
avoids heat in the summer, so, in the decline of the year, he 
improves the faint autumnal beams by getting within the 
reflection of a fruit-wall; and though he never has read that 
planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of 
warmth, he incHnes his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to 
collect and admit every feeble ray. 

Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embarrassed reptile, 
— to be cased in a suit of ponderous armor, which he cannot 
lay aside; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his own shell, 
must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition 
for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the 
beginning of June) when his exertions are remarkable. He then 
walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning; and, 
traversing the garden, examines every wicket and interstice in 
the fences, through which he will escape if possible; and often 
has eluded the care of the gardener, and wandered to some dis- 
tant field. The motives that impel him to undertake these 
rambles seem to be of the amorous kind ; his fancy then becomes 
intent on attachments, which transport him beyond his usual 
gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn 
deportment. 



EDMUND BURKE 

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF 
OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 

1756 

[This work was published when Burke was twenty-six years old, and had 
been begun when he was in his nineteenth year. The first four parts of the 
treartse deal with the nature of pleasure, of beauty, and of the sublime, 
with special reference to physical objects and their impressions on the 
senses; the fifth part, on language and literature, is reproduced here. The 
text is the revised form of the second edition (1757), to which Burke 
added a prefatory discourse on Taste, following out some of the matters 
taken up by Addison in his paper on the subject. While the psychology of 
the whole essay is now obsolete, it remains both intrinsically interesting 
and historically significant as one of the earliest English studies in the 
theory of aesthetics. In particular, the discussion in Part V of the com- 
parative powers of language and the arts of form, influenced Lessing's 
treatment of the same subject in his Laocoon (1766).] 

PART V 

Section I. Of Words. Natiiral objects affect us, by the laws 
of that connection which Providence has estabhshed between 
certain motions and configurations of bodies, and certain con- 
sequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in the same 
manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation. Archi- 
tecture affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; 
from which latter result the rules of proportion, which makes 
a work to be praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, 
when the end for which it was designed is or is not properly 
answered. But as to words, they seem to me to affect us in a 
manner very different from that in which we are affected by 
natural objects, or by painting or architecture; yet words have 
as considerable a share in exciting ideas of beauty and of the 
sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much greater than 
any of them. Therefore an inquiry into the manner by which 
they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary, in a 
discourse of this kind. 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 550 

Section II. The Common Effects oe Poetry, not by 
RAISING Ideas of Things. The common notion of the power of 
poetry and eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary con- 
versation, is that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of 
those things for which custom has appointed them to stand. 
To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to ob- 
serve that words may be divided into three sorts. The first are 
such as represent many simple ideas united by nature^o iorm 
some one determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, 
etc. These I call aggregate words. The secondare they that 
stand for one simple idea of such compositions, and no more; 
as red, blue, round, square, and the like. These I call simple 
abstract words. The third are those which are formed by an 
union — an arbitrary union — of both the others, and of the 
various relations between them, in greater or lesser degrees of 
complexity; as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the 
like. These I call compound abstract words. Words, I am sensi- 
ble, are capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; 
but these seem to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and 
they are disposed in that order in which they are commonly 
taught, and in which the mind gets the ideas they are substi- 
tuted for. 

I shall begin with the third sort of words, — compound 
abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility. Of these 
I am convinced that, whatever power they may have on the 
passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised 
in the mind of the things for which they stand. As composi- 
tions, they are not real essences, and hardly cause,! think, any 
real ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing the 
sounds virtue, liberty, or honor, conceives any precise notions 
of the particular modes of action and thinking, together with 
the mixed and simple ideas, and the several relations of them, 
for which these words are substituted. Neither has he any 
general idea, compounded of them; for if he had, then some of 
those particular ones, though indistinct, perhaps, and con- 
fused, might soon come to be perceived. But this, I take it, is 
hardly ever the case. For, put yourself upon analyzing one of 
these words, and you must reduce it from one set of general 
words to another, and then into the simple abstracts and ag- 
gregates, in a much longer series than may be at first imagined, 



56o EDMUND BURKE 

before any real idea emerges to light, — before you come to dis- 
cover anything like the first principles of such compositions; 
and when you have made such a discovery of the original 
ideas, the effect of the composition is utterly lost. A train of 
thinking of this sort is much too long to be pursued in the 
ordinary ways of conversation; nor is it at all necessary that 
it should. Such words are in reality but mere sounds; but they 
are sounds which, being used on particular occasions, wherein 
we receive some good, or suffer some evil, or see others affected 
with good or evil, or which we hear apphed to other interesting 
things or events; and being applied in such a variety of cases 
that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they 
produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, 
effects similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being 
often used without reference to any particular occasion, and 
carrying still their first impressions, they at last utterly lose their 
connection with the particular occasions that gave rise to them ; 
yet the sound, without any annexed notion, continues to oper- 
ate as before. 

Section III. General Words before Ideas. Mr. Locke has 
somewhere observed, with his usual sagacity, that most gen- 
eral words — those belonging to virtue and vice, good and 
evil, especially — are taught before the particular modes of 
action to which they belong are presented to the mind; and 
with them the love of the one, and the abhorrence of the other. 
vFor the minds of children are so ductile that a nurse, or any 
person about a child, by seeming pleased or displeased with any 
thing, or even any word, may give the disposition of the child a 
similar turn. When, afterwards, the several occurrences in life 
come to be applied to these words, and that which is pleasant 
often appears under the name of evil, and what is disagreeable 
to nature is called good and virtuous, a strange confusion of 
ideas and affections arises in the minds of many, and an appear- 
ance of no small contradiction between their notions and their 
actions. There are many who love virtue and who detest vice, 
and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who notwithstand- 
ing very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars, without 
the least remorse, because these particular occasions never 
came into view when the passions on the side of virtue were so 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 561 

warmly affected by certain words heated originally by the 
breath of others. And for this reason it is hard to repeat certain 
sets of words, though owned by themselves unoperative, with- 
out being in some degree affected, especially if a warm and 
affecting tone of voice accompanies them. As suppose — 

Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great. 

These words, by having no application, ought to be unopera- 
tive; but when words commonly sacred to great occasions are 
used, we are affected by them, even without the occasions. 
When words which have been generally so applied are put to- 
gether without any rational view, or in such a manner that they 
do not rightly agree with each other, the style is called bom- 
bast. And it requires in several cases much good sense and ex- 
perience to be guarded against the force of such language; for 
when propriety is neglected, a greater number of these affecting 
words may be taken into the service, and a greater variety may 
be indulged in combining them. 

Section IV. The Effect of Words. If words have all their 
possible extent of power, three effects arise in the mind of the 
hearer. The first is, the sound; the second, the picture, or repre- 
sentation of the thing signified by the sound; the third is the 
affection of the soul produced by one or by both of the fore- 
going. Compounded abstract words, of which we have been 
speaking (honor, justice, Hberty, and the like), produce the 
first and the last of these effects, but not the second. Simple ab- 
stracts are used to signify some one simple idea, without much 
adverting to others which may chance to attend it, as blue, 
green, hot, cold, and the hke. These are capable of affecting 
all three of the purposes of words, as the aggregate words (man, 
castle, horse, etc.) are in a yet higher degree. But I am of opin- 
ion that the most general effect, even of these words, does not 
arise from their forming pictures of the several things they 
would represent in the imagination; because, on a very diligent 
examination of my own mind, and getting others to consider 
theirs, I do not find that once in twenty times any such picture 
is formed; and when it is, there is most commonly a particular 
effort of the imagination for that purpose. But the aggregate 
words operate, as I said of the compound-abstracts, not by 



562 EDMUND BURKE 

presenting any image to the mind, but by having from use the 
same effect, on being mentioned, that their original has when it 
is seen. 

Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect: "The river 
Danube rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the heart of 
Germany, where, winding to and fro, it waters several princi- 
palities, until, turning into Austria, and laving the walls of 
Vienna, it passes into Hungary. There, with a vast flood, aug- 
mented by the Saave and the Drave, it quits Christendom, and, 
rolling through the barbarous countries which border on Tar- 
tary, it enters by many mouths in the Black Sea." In this de- 
scription many things are mentioned, as mountains, rivers, 
cities, the sea, etc. But let anybody examine Ivimself, and see 
whether he has had impressed on his imagination any pictures 
of a river, mountain, watery soil, Germany, etc. Indeed it is 
impossible, in the rapidity and quick succession of words in 
conversation, to have ideas both of the sound of the word and 
of the thing represented. Besides, some words, expressing real 
essences, are so mixed with others of a general and nominal 
import, that it is impracticable to jump from sense to thought, 
from particulars to generals, from things to words, in such a 
manner as to answer the purposes of life; nor is it necessary 
that we should. 

Section V. Examples that Words may affect without 
RA.ISING Images. I find it hard to persuade several that their 
passions are affected by words from whence they have no ideas, 
and yet harder to convince them that, in the ordinary course of 
conversation, we are sufficiently understood without raising 
any images of the things concerning which we speak. It seems 
to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he has 
ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man, in his 
own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But, strange as it 
may appear, we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have 
of things, or whether we have any ideas at all upon some sub- 
jects. It even requires a good deal of attention to be thor- 
oughly satisfied on this head. Since I wrote these papers, I 
found two very striking instances of the possibility there is that 
a man may hear words without having any idea of the things 
which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of return- 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 563 

ing them to others, combined in a new way, and with great pro- 
priety, energy, and instruction. The first instance is that of 
Mr. Blacklock, a poet bHnd from his birth. Few men blessed 
with the most perfect sight can describe visual objects with 
more spirit and justness than this bhnd man, which cannot 
possibly be attributed to his having a clearer conception of 
the things he describes than is common to other persons. Mr. 
Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works 
of this poet, reasons very ingeniously and, I imagine, for the 
most part very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary 
phenomenon. But I cannot altogether agree with him that 
some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in 
these poems, have arisen from the blind poet's imperfect con- 
ception of visual objects, since such improprieties, and much 
greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class than Mr. 
Blacklock, and who notwithstanding possessed the faculty of 
seeing in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much 
affected by his own descriptions as any that reads them can be ; 
and yet he is affected with this strong enthusiasm by things of 
which he neither has, nor can possibly have, any idea further 
than that of a bare sound. And why may not those who read 
his works be affected in the same manner that he was, with as 
little of any real ideas of the things described? 

The second instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of math- 
ematics in the University of Cambridge. This learned man had 
acquired great knowledge in natural philosophy, in astronomy, 
and whatever sciences depend upon mathematical skill. What 
was the most extraordinary, and the most to my purpose, he 
gave excellent lectures upon light and colors; and this man 
taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and 
which he himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that 
the words red, blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas 
of the colors themselves; for, the ideas of greater or lesser de- 
grees of refrangibihty being apphed to these words, and the 
blind man being instructed in what other respects they were 
found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy for him to reason 
upon the words as if he had been fully master of the ideas. In- 
deed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the 
way of experiment. He did nothing but what we do every day 
in comiih^w iliscourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and 



564 EDMUND BURKE 

used the words "every day" and "common discourse," I had 
no images in my mind of any succession of time, nor of men in 
conference with each other; nor do I imagine that the reader 
will have any such ideas on reading it. Neither when I spoke 
of red, or blue, or green, as well as refrangibility, had I these 
several colors, or the rays of light passing into a different me- 
dium and there diverted from their course, painted before me in 
the way of images. I know very well that the mind possesses a 
faculty of raising such images at pleasure; but then an act of the 
will is necessary to this, and in ordinary conversation or reading 
it is very rarely that any image at all is excited in the mind. If 
I say, "I shall go to Italy next summer," I am well understood. 
Yet I believe nobody has by this painted in his imagination the 
exact figure of the speaker passing by land or water, or both, 
sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a carriage, with all the 
particulars of the journey. Still less has he any idea of Italy, the 
country to which I propose to go; or of the greenness of the 
fields, the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with 
the change to this from a different season, which are the ideas 
forwhich the word " summer " is substituted. But least of all has 
he any image from the word "next"; for this word stands for 
the idea of many summers, with the exclusion of all but one, 
and surely the man who says "next summer " has no images of 
such a succession and such an exclusion. In short, it is not only 
of those ideas which are commonly called abstract, and of which 
no image at all can be formed, but even of particular, real be- 
ings, that we converse without having any idea of them excited 
in the imagination, as will certainly appear on a diligent exami- 
nation of our minds. 

Indeed, so little does poetry depend for its effect on the power 
of raising sensible images, that I am convinced it would lose a 
very considerable part of its energy, if this were the necessary 
result of all description. Because that union of affecting words, 
which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments, would 
frequently lose its force, along with its propriety and consist- 
ency, if the sensible images were always excited. There is not, 
perhaps, in the whole Mneid a more grand and labored passage 
than the description of Vulcan's cavern in ^Etna, and the works 
that are there carried on. Virgil dwells particularly on the for- 
mation of the thunder, which he describes unfinished under the 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL . 565 

hammers of the Cyclops. But what are the principles of this 
extraordinary composition? 

Tres imhris torti radios, tres nuhis aquosce 
Addiderant; ruiuli tres ignis, ei alitis ausiri; 
Fulgores nunc ierrificos, sonilumque, metumque 
Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras. 

This seems to me admirably sublime; yet if we attend coolly 
to the kind of sensible images which a combination of ideas of 
this sort must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear 
more wild and absurd than such a picture. "Three rays of 
twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and three 
of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work terrific 
lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing 
flames." This strange composition is formed into a gross body; 
it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly 
continues rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assem- 
blage of words corresponding to many noble ideas which are 
connected by circumstances of time or place, or related to each 
other as cause and effect, or associated in any natural way, they 
may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer 
their end. The picturesque connection is not demanded, be- 
cause no real picture is formed, nor is the effect of the descrip- 
tion at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by 
Priam and the old men of his council is generally thought to 
give us the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty. 

Ov v4fi(.(n% TpQas Kai ivKv-fjiiiSas 'Axato!>s 

ToiTjS d//.0t yvvaiKi iro\{)v xp^vov dXyea Trdtrxf"'' 

AiVws 5' ddavdrriffi Oeris eh Siira iOtKev. 

They cried, No wonder such celestial charms 

For nine long years have set the world in arms; 

What winning gfaces! what majestic mien! 

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen. Pope. 

Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; no- 
thing which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her 
person; but yet we are much more touched by this manner of 
mentioning her than by those long and labored descriptions of 
Helen, whether handed down by tradition or formed by fancy, 
which are to be met with in some authors. I am sure it affects 
me much more than the minute description which Spenser has 
given of Belphebe. though I own that there are parts in that de- 



566 EDMUND BURKE 

scription, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent 
writer, extremely fine and poetical. 

The terrible picture which Lucretius has drawn of Religion, 
in order to display the magnanimity of his philosophical hero 
in opposing her, is thought to be designed with great boldness 
and spirit. 

Humana ante oculos jcede cum vita jaceret, 
In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione, 
QucB caput e cceli regionibus osiendebat 
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans; 
Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra 
Est oculos ausus ^ — 

What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? None at 
all, most certainly; neither has the poet said a single word which 
might in the least serve to mark a single Hmb or feature of the 
phantom which he intended to represent in all the horrors im- 
agination can conceive. In reality, poetry and rhetoric do not 
succeed in exact description so well as painting does. Their 
business is to affect rather by sympathy than imitation, to dis- 
play rather the effect of things on the mind of the speaker, or of 
others, than to present a clear idea of the things themselves. 
This is their most extensive province, and that in which they 
succeed the best. 

Section VI. Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art. Hence 
we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general sense, 
cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation. It is 
indeed an imitation so far as it describes the manners and pas- 
sions of men which their words can express, — where animi 
motus efert interprete lingua} There it is strictly imitation ; and 
all merely dramatic poetry is of this sort. But descriptive -po^^^Y 
operates chiefly by substitution, — by the means of sounds 
which by custom have the effect of realities. Nothing is an imi- 
tation further than as it resembles some other thing, and words 
undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for 
which they stand. 

1 "When human Hfe to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed down under the 
weight of Religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect 
lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her 
face, and first to withstand her to her face." (Translation of Prof. H. A. J. Munro.) 

^ "The emotions of the soul are expressed by the tongue as interpreter." 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 567 

Section VII. How Words influence the Passions. 
Now as words aflfect, not by any original power, but by repre- 
sentation, it might be supposed that their influence over the pas- 
sions should be but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find 
by experience that eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay 
indeed much more capable, of making deep and lively impres- 
sions than any other arts, and even than nature itself in very 
many cases. And this arises chiefly from these three causes. 
First, that we take an extraordinary part in the passions of 
others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sym- 
pathy by any tokens which are shown of them, and there are no 
tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions 
so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any subject, 
he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the 
manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that 
the influence of most things on our passions is not so much from 
the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; 
and these again depend very much on the opinions of other 
men, conveyable for the most part by words only. Secondly, 
there are many things of a very affecting nature, which can 
seldom occur in the reahty, but the words that represent them 
often do; and thus they have an opportunity of nrnking a deep 
impression and taking root in the mind, whilst the idea of the 
reality was transient, and to some perhaps never really oc- 
curred in any shape, to whom it is notwithstanding very affect- 
ing, — as war, death, famine, etc. Besides, many ideas have 
never been at all presented to the senses of any men but by 
words, as God, angels, devils, heaven and hell, all of which have 
however a great influence over the passions. Thirdly, by words 
we have it in our power to make such combinations as we can- 
not possibly do otherwise. By this power of combining, we are 
able, by the addition of well chosen circumstances, to give a 
new life and force to the simple object. In painting we may re- 
present any fine figure we please, but we never can give it those 
enlivening touches which it may receive from words. To repre- 
sent an angel in a picture, you can only draw a beautiful young 
man winged; but what painting can furnish out anything so 
grand as the addition of one word, ^' the angel of the Lord" ? It 
is true, I have here no clear idea; but these words afi"ect the 
mind more than the sensible image did; which is all I contend 



568 EDMUND BURKE 

for. A picture of Priam dragged to the altar's foot, and there 
murdered, if it were well executed would undoubtedly be very- 
moving ; but there are very aggravating circumstances which it 
could never represent : — 

Sanguine foedantem quos ipse sacraverat ignes.^ 

As a further instance, let us consider those Hues of Milton, 
where he describes the travels of the fallen angels though their 

dismal habitation : — 

• 

— O'er many a dark and dreary vale 

They passed, and many a region dolorous; 

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp; 

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 

A universe of death. — 

Here is displayed the force of union in — 

Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades; 

which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect if they 
were not the — 

Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades — of death. 

This idea, or this affection, caused by a word, which nothing 
but a word could annex to the others, raises a very great degree 
of the sublime; and this sublime is raised yet higher by what 
follows, a ^'universe of death" Here are again two ideas not 
presentable but by language, and an union of them great and 
amazing beyond conception, — if they may properly be called 
ideas which present no distinct image to the mind. But still it 
will be difficult to conceive how words can move the passions 
which belong to real objects, without representing these objects 
clearly. This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently 
distinguish, in our observations upon language, between a clear 
expression and a strong expression. These are frequently con- 
founded with each other, though they are in reality extremely 
different. The former regards the understanding; the latter 
belongs to the passions. The one describes a thing as it is; the 
latter describes it as it is felt. Now as there is a moving tone of 
voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which 
affect independently of the things about which they are exerted, 
so there are words, and certain dispositions of words, which, 

• "Polluting with his blood the very fires which he had consecrated." 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 569 

being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always 
used by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch 
and move us more than those which far more clearly and dis- 
tinctly express the subject-matter. We yield to sympathy what 
we refuse to description. The truth is, all verbal description, 
merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys 
so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it 
could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not 
call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and 
lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, 
we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably 
might never have been struck out by the object described. 
Words, by strongly conveying the passions, by those means 
which we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their 
weakness in other respects. It may be observed that very pol- 
ished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clear- 
ness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength. The 
French language has that perfection and that defect; whereas 
the Oriental tongues, and in general the languages of most un- 
polished people, have a great force and energy of expression; 
and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary 
observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; 
but for that reason they admire more, and are more affected 
with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a 
warmer and more passionate manner. If the affection be well 
conveyed, it will work its effect without any clear idea, often 
without any idea at all of the thing which has originally given 
rise to it. 

It might be expected, from the fertility of the subject, that 
I should consider poetry, as it regards the sublime and beautiful, 
more at large; but it must be observed that in this light it has 
been often and well handled already. It was not my design to 
enter into the criticism of the sublime and beautiful in any art, 
but to attempt to lay down such principles as may tend to ascer- 
tain, to distinguish, and to form a sort of standard for them; 
which purposes I thought might be best effected by an inquiry 
into the properties of such things in nature as raise love and 
astonishment in us, and by showing in what manner they oper- 
ated to produce these passions. Words were only so far to be 
considered, as to show upon what principle they were capable 



570 EDMUND BURKE 

of being the representatives of these natural things, and by 
what powers they were able to affect us often as strongly as the 
things they represent, and sometimes much more strongly. 



THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT 

DISCONTENTS 

1770 

[This pamphlet was written on behalf of the "Rockingham Whigs." To 
it, says the account of Burke in the Dictionary of National Biography, "is 
to be attributed the regeneration of the Whigs by the revival of the prin- 
ciples of 1688, which had been wellnigh forgotten by the intrigues of 
the Bedford faction. Burke defended the popular discontent. . . . The 
fault lay with the administration; the power of the crown had revived 
under the name of influence, and the intrigues of the court cabal were tak- 
ing the place of the interests of the people. . . . The true remedies were 
to give weight to the opinion of the people by doing away with the secrecy 
of parliamentary proceedings, and to substitute loyal adherence to party 
for the influence of the court." The extracts here reproduced are from the 
concluding portion, in defense of party government.] 

... It is not enough, in a situation of trust in the common- 
wealth, that a man means well to his country; it is not enough 
that in his single person he never did an evil act, but always voted 
according to his conscience, and even harangued against every 
design which he apprehended to be prejudicial to the interests 
of his country. This innoxious and ineffectual character, that 
seems formed upon a plan of apology and disculpation, falls 
miserably short of the mark of pubHc duty. That duty de- 
mands and requires that what is right should not only be made 
known, but made prevalent ; that what is evil should not only be 
detected, but defeated. When the public man omits to put him- 
self in a situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission 
that frustrates the purposes of his trust almost as much as if he 
had formally betrayed it. It is surely no very rational account 
of a man's life, that he has always acted right, but has taken 
special care to act in such a manner that his endeavors could 
not possibly be productive of any consequence. 

I do not wonder that the behavior of many parties should 
have made persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat 
out of humor with all sorts of connection in politics. I admit 
that people frequently acquire in such confederacies a narrow, 



THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS 571 

bigoted, and proscriptive spirit; that they are apt to sink the 
idea of the general good in this circumscribed and partial inter- 
est. But where duty renders a critical situation a necessary 
one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant upon 
it, and not to fly from the situation itself. If a fortress is seated 
in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to 
be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his station. 
Every profession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, 
or the sacred one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; 
which, however, form no argument against those ways of life; 
nor are the vices themselves inevitable to every individual in 
those professions. Of such a nature are connections in pohtics; 
essentially necessary for the full performance of our public 
duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into faction. Common- 
wealths are made of families, free commonwealths of parties 
also; and we may as well affirm that our natural regards and 
ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that 
the bonds of our party weaken those by which we are held to 
our country. 

Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a 
crime against the state. I do not know whether this might not 
have been rather to overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the 
best patriots in the greatest commonwealths have always com- 
mended and promoted such connections. Idem sentire de re- 
publican was with them a principal ground of friendship and at- 
tachment; nor do I know any other capable of forming firmer, 
dearer, more pleasing, more honorable, and more virtuous habi- 
tudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even 
the holding of offices together, the disposition of which arose 
from chance, not selection, gave rise to a relation which contin- 
ued for life. It was called necessitudo sortis; and it was looked 
upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds 
of civil relation were considered as acts of the most distin- 
guished turpitude. The whole people was distributed into po- 
litical societies, in which they acted in support of such interests 
in the state as they severally affected. For it was then thought 
no crime to endeavor by every honest means to advance to su- 
periority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. 
This wise people was far from imagining that those connections 
1 "To hold the same political opinions." 



572 EDMUND BURKE 

had no tie, and obliged to no duty, but that men might quit 
them without shame, upon every call of interest. They believed 
private honor to be the great foundation of public trust; that 
friendship was no mean step toward patriotism ; that he who, in 
the common intercourse of life, showed he regarded somebody 
besides himself, when he came to act in a public situation, 
might probably consult some other interest than his own. 
Never may we become plus sages que les sages, as the French 
comedian has happily expressed it, — wiser than all the wise and 
good men who have lived before us. It was their wish to see 
public and private virtues, not dissonant and jarring, and mu- 
tually destructive, but harmoniously combined, growing out of 
one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally sup- 
porting and supported. In one of the most fortunate periods 
of our history this country was governed by a connection, — I 
mean the great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. 
They were complimented upon the principle of this connection 
by a poet who was in high esteem with them. Addison, who 
knew their sentiments, could not praise them for what they con- 
sidered as no proper subject of commendation. As a poet who 
knew his business, he could not applaud them for a thing which 
in general estimation was not highly reputable. Addressing him- 
self to Britain, — 

Thy favorites grow not up by fortune's sport, 

Or from the crimes or folUes of a court; 

On the firm basis of desert they rise, 

From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties. 

The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper me- 
thod of rising into power was through hard essays of practiced 
friendship and experimented fidehty.^^t that time it was not 
imagined that patriotism was a bloody idol, which required the 
sacrifice of children and parents, or dearest connections in pri- 
vate life, and of all the virtues that rise from those relations. 
They were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to im- 
agine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in pa- 
tiently bearing the sufferings of your friends, or that disinter- 
estedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other peo- 
ple's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, 
who did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, 



THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS 573 

who did not act with confidence; that no men could act with 
confidence, who were not bound together by common opinions, 
common affections, and common interests. 

These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord 
Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well 
principled in these maxims upon which the whole fabric of 
pubhc strength is built, to be blown off their ground by the 
breath of every childish talker. They were not afraid that they 
should be called an ambitious Junto, or that their resolution to 
stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted into 
a scuffle for places. 

• Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint 
endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle 
in which they are all agreed. For my part, I find it impossible 
to conceive that any one believes in his own politics, or thinks 
them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of 
having them reduced into practice. It is the business of the 
speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. 
It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in 
action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to 
employ them with effect. Therefore every honorable connec- 
tion will avow it is their first purpose to pursue every just 
method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a con- 
dition as may enable them to carry their common plans into 
execution, with all the power and authority of the state. As 
this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty to 
contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, 
they are bound to give to their own party the preference in all 
thingsTand by no means, for private considerations, to accept 
any offers of power in which the whole body is not included; nor 
to suffer themselves to be led, or to be controlled, or to be over- 
balanced, in office or in council, by those who contradict the 
very fundamental principles on which their party is formed, 
and even those upon which every fair connection must stand. 
Such a generous contention for power, on such manly and 
honorable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean 
and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very 
style of such persons will serve to discriminate them from those 
numberless impostors who have deluded the ignorant with pro- 
fessions incompatible with human practice, and have after- 



574 EDMUND BURKE 

wards incensed them by practices below the level of vulgar 
rectitude. 

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, 
that their maxims have a plausible air, and, on a cursory view, 
appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. 
They are as current as copper coin, and about as valuable. 
They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they 
are at least as useful to the worst men as the best. Of this 
stamp is the cant of Not men hut measures, — a sort of charm 
by which many people get loose from every honorable engage- 
ment. When I see a man acting this desultory and disconnected 
part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as prejudice 
to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is right, 
but I am ready to beheve he is in earnest. I respect virtue in all 
its situations, even when it is found in the unsuitable company 
of weakness. I lament to see qualities, rare and valuable, squan- 
dered away without any public utility. But when a gentleman 
with great visible emoluments abandons the party in which he 
has long acted, and tells you it is because he proceeds upon his 
own judgment; that he acts on the merits of the several mea- 
sures as they arise; and that he is obliged to follow his own con- 
science, and not that of others; he gives reasons which it is 
impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it is 
impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never 
differed from a certain set of men until the moment they lost 
their power, and who never agreed with them in a single in- 
stance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest 
and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraor- 
dinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connections should de- 
generate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when 
they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people 
desert their connections, the desertion is a manifest /ac/, upon 
which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether 
a measure of government be right or wrong, is no matter of fact, 
but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do, 
dispute and wrangle without end. But whether the individual 
thinks the measure right or wrong, is a point at still a greater 
distance from the reach of all human decision. It is therefore 
very convenient to pohticians not to put the judgment of their 
conduct on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary court, but 



THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS 575 

upon such matter as can be triable only in that secret tribunal 
where they are sure of being heard with favor, or where at worst 
the sentence will be only private whipping. 

I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doc- 
trine which has a tendency to destroy all test of character as 
deduced from conduct. He will therefore excuse my adding 
something more, towards the further clearing up a point which 
the great convenience of obscurity to dishonesty has been able 
to cover with some degree of darkness and doubt. 

In order to throw an odium on political connection, these 
politicians suppose it a necessary incident to it that you are 
blindly to follow the opinions of your party, when in direct 
opposition to your own clear ideas; a degree of servitude that 
no worthy man could bear the thought of submitting to, and 
such as, I believe, no connections (except some court factions) 
ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to im.pose. Men think- 
ing freely will, in particular instances, think differently. But 
still, as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course 
of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great 
leading general principles in government, a man must be pecu- 
liarly unfortunate in the choice of his political company if he 
does not agree with them at least nine times in ten. If he does 
not concur in these general principles upon which the party is 
founded, and which necessarily draw on a concurrence in their 
application, he ought from the beginning to have chosen some 
other, more conformable to his opinions. When the question is 
in its nature doubtful, or not very material, the modesty which 
becomes an individual, and (in spite of our court moralists) 
that partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will 
frequently bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. 
Thus the disagreement will naturally be rare; it will be only 
enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord, or dis- 
turbing arrangement. And this is all that ever was required for 
a character of the greatest uniformity and steadiness in connec- 
tion. How men can proceed without any connection at all, is 
to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must 
that man be made, — how must he be tempered and put to- 
gether, who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hun- 
dred and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm of such 
tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, 



576 EDMUND BURKE 

and tempers, and characters, in the agitation of such mighty 
questions, in the discussion of such vast and ponderous inter- 
ests, without seeing any one sort of men, whose character, con- 
duct, or disposition would lead him to associate himself with 
them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of public utility? 
I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says "that 
the man who lives wholly detached from others, must be either 
an angel or a devil." When I see in any of these detached gen- 
tlemen of our times the angeHc purity, power, and beneficence, 
I shall admit them to be angels. In the mean time we are born 
only to be men. We shall do enough if we form ourselves to be 
good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to cultivate in 
our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigor and maturity, every 
sort of generous and honest feeling that belongs to our nature. 
To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the 
service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as 
not to forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and 
to incur enmities. To have both strong, but both selected; in 
the one, to be placable, — in the other, immovable. To model 
our principles to our duties and our situation. To be fully per- 
suaded that all virtue which is impracticable is spurious; and 
rather to run the risk of falling into faults in a course which 
leads us to act with effect and energy, than to loiter out our 
days without blame and without use. Public life is a situation 
of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps 
upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy. . . . 

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 

1790 

[On the anniversary of the landing of the Prince of Orange in the Revo- 
lution of 1688, the members of the Revolution Society listened to a sermon 
(Nov. 4, 1789) in the Meeting-house in the Old Jewry, preached by Dr. 
Richard Price, a nonconformist divine, who expressed great admiration 
for the leaders of the Revolution in France (see Burke's quotation from 
the sermon, page 581, below). This aroused Burke, who had from the first 
been hostile to the Revolution, and for a year he labored on a reply, which 
came out as the Reflections, addressed to a French gentleman, M. Dupont, 
who had asked his opinion of the Revolution. The book went through 
eleven editions within a year, and created an extraordinary sensation. The 
famous passage on Marie Antoinette (page 588) was ridiculed by Francis 
as "pure foppery, ' ' but B urke declared that the ' ' tears came again into my 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 577 

eyes, almost as often as I looked at the description; they may again. . . . 
My friend, I tell you it is truth, and that it is true, and will be true, when 
you and I are no more." The Reflections are not divided into sections; 
the extracts here reproduced will be found in the Bohn Library Edition of 
Burke's Works, vol. II, pp. 331-352. For Paine's reply, see pages 616-23, 
below.] 

. . . Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart 
from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to 
withhold), thereat rights of men. In denying their false claims of 
right, I do not mean to injure those which are real and are such 
as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society 
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which 
it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence, 
and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a 
right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice, as be- 
tween their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic func- 
tion or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits 
of their industry, and to the means of making their industry 
fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; 
to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to in- 
struction in hfe, and to consolation in death. Whatever eachj 
man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has 
a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of 
all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can 
do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, 
but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the 
partnership, has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred 
pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to 
an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock ; and as to 
the share of power, authority, and direction which each indi- 
vidual ought to have in the management of the state, that I 
must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in 
civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social 
man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention. 

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention 
must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the 
descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every 
sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. 
They can have no being in any other state of things; and how 
can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, 



578 EDMUND BURKE 

rights which do not so much as suppose its existence? rights 
which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives 
to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental 
rules, is that no man should he judge in his own cause. By this 
each person has at once divested himself of the first funda- 
mental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for him- 
self, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be 
his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, aban- 
dons the right of self-defense, the first law of nature. Men can- 
not enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. 
That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining 
what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may 
secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole 
of it. 

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which 
may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much 
greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract per- 
fection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. 
By having a right to everything they want everything. Gov- 
ernment is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human 
wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided 
for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the 
want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their 
passions. Society requires not only that the passions of indi- 
viduals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and 
body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men 
should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their 
passions brought into subjection. This can only be done hy a 
power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, 
subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to 
bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well 
as their liberties, are to be reckoned amongst their rightsA'Sut 
as the hberties and the restrictions vary with times and cir- 
, cumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot 
be settled upon any abstract rule ; and nothing is so foolish as 
to discuss them upon that principle. 

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men 
each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limi- 
tation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organi- 
zation of government becomes a consideration of convenience. 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 579 

This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due 
distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and 
comphcated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human na- 
ture and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate 
or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the 
mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to 
its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use 
of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The 
question is upon the method of procuring and administering 
them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the 
aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of 
metaphysics. 

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating 
it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not 
to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can in- 
struct us in that practical science; because the real effects of 
moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the 
first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter 
operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects 
it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and 
very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, 
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states 
there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things 
which appear at first view of httle moment, on which a very 
great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially 
depend. The science of government being therefore so practi- 
cal in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a mat- 
ter which requires experience, and even more experience than 
any person can gain in his whole Hfe, however sagacious and 
observing he may be, — it is with infinite caution that any 
man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has 
answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes 
of society, or on building it up again without having models 
and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. 

These metaphysic rights, entering into common hfe like 
rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the 
laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the 
gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, 
the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refrac- 
tions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as 



58o EDMUND BURKE 

if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. 
The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the 
greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposi- 
tion or direction of power can be suitable either to man's 
nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the sim- 
plicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new poHti- 
cal constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are 
grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their 
duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to 
say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but 
one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely 
captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much 
more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its 
complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be 
imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while some 
parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be 
totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over- 
care of a favorite member. 

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and 
in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally 
and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, 
incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The 
rights of men in governments are their advantages; and these 
are often in balances between differences of good, in compro- 
mises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes be- 
tween evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle; 
adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally, and not 
metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations. 

By these theorists the right of the people is almost always 
sophistically confounded with their power. The body of the 
community, whenever it can come to act, can meet with no 
effectual resistance; but till power and right are the same, the 
whole body of them has no right inconsistent with virtue, and 
the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is 
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit; for though 
a pleasant writer said, Liceat perire poetis ,^ when one of them, in 
cold blood, is said to have leaped into the flames of a volcanic 
revolution, Ardentem frigidus ^tnam insiluitj^ I consider such 

' "Poets have a right to perish." 

» lEmpedocles,] himself " cold [with age?], leaped into burning .^tna." 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 581 

a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than as one of 
the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he were poet, or 
divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I 
think that more wise, because more charitable, thoughts would 
urge me rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen 
slippers as the monuments of his folly. . . . 
X^ Plots, massacres, assassinations, seem* to some people a trivial 
price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodless reforma- 
tion, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to their taste. 
There must be a great change of scene; there must be a magni- 
ficent stage efTect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the 
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty 
years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public pros- 
perity. The preacher found them all in the French Revolution. 
This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His 
enthusiasm kindles as he advances, and when he arrives at his 
peroration it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah 
of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious 
state of France, as in a bird's-eye landscape of a promised land, 
he breaks out into the following rapture: — 

''What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have 
lived to it; I could almost say, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant 
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. — I have 
lived to see a diffusion of knowledge, which has undermined 
superstition and error. — I have lived to see the rights of men 
better understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty 
which seemed to have lost the idea of it. — I have lived to see 
thirty millions of people, indignant and resolute, spurning at 
slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice; their 
king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering him- 
self to his subjects.'^ ... 

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and 
prophetic ejaculation, commonly called Nunc dimittis, made on 
the first presentation of our Saviour in the temple, and apply- 
ing it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most 
horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was 
exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This "lead- 
ing in triumph,'' a thing in its best form unmanly and irreligious, 
which fifls our preacher with such unhaflowed transports, must 
shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind, Sev- 



"^^A-A-*.^ 



582 EDMUND BURKE 

eral English were the stupefied and indignant spectators of that 
triumph. It was (unless we have been strangely deceived) a 
spectacle more resembling a procession of American savages, 
entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called 
victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their 
captives, overpowered with the scofifs and buffets of women as 
ferocious as themselves, much more than it resembled the tri- 
umphal pomp of a civilized martial nation; — if a civilized na- 
tion, or any men who had a sense of generosity, were capable of 
a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted. 
i^This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France. I must be- 
lieve that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you with shame and 
horror. I must believe that the National Assembly find them- 
selves in a state of the greatest humiliation in not being able to 
punish the authors of this triumph, or the actors in it; and that 
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they may make 
upon the subject must be destitute even of the appearance of 
liberty or impartiality. The apology of that assembly is found 
in their situation; but when we approve what they must bear, 
it is in us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind. 

With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote un- 
der the dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as 
it were, of a foreign republic; they have their residence in a city 
whose constitution has emanated neither from the charter of 
their king nor from their legislative power. They are sur- 
rounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their 
crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to 
dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them. There they sit, 
after a gang of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the 
members; whilst those who held the same moderate principles, 
with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed 
to outrageous insults and murderous threats. There a majority, 
sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels 
a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the pol- 
luted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffee-houses. 
It is notorious that all their measures are decided before they 
are debated. It is beyond doubt that, under the terror of the 
bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses, they 
are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate measures sug- 
gested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all condi- 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 583 

tions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found persons 
in comparison of whom Catihne would be thought scrupulous, 
and Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in 
these clubs alone that the public measures are deformed into 
monsters. They undergo a previous distortion in academies, 
intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set 
up in all the places of public resort. In these meetings of all 
sorts, every counsel,' in proportion as it is daring, and violent, 
and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Hu- 
manity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of supersti- 
tion and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as 
treason to the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect 
as"property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, mas- 
sacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are 
forming plans for the good order of future society. Embracing 
in their arms the carcases of base criminals, and promoting 
their relations on the title of their offenses, they drive hundreds 
of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsist 
by beggary or by crime. 

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of de- 
liberation with as little decency as liberty. They act like the 
comedians of a fair before a riotous audience; they act amidst 
the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of 
women lost to shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, 
direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes mix and 
take their seats amongst them, domineering over them with a 
strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous 
authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery 
is in the place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows 
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect 
of a grave legislative body — nee color imperii, necfrons erat ulla 
senatusA They have a power given to them, like that of the evil 
principle, to subvert and destroy; but none to construct, except 
such machines as maybe fitted for further subversion and fur- 
ther destruction. 

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to, na- 
tional representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and 
disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perver- 
sion of that sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of re- 

^ 1 "There was neither the complexion of empire nor any appearance of a senate." 



584 EDMUND BURKE 

publics, must alike abhor it. The members of your Assembly 
must themselves groan under the tyranny of which they have 
all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. 
I am sure many of the members who compose even the majority 
of that body must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of 
the Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable assembly! 
How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of 
their members who could call a day which seemed to blot the 
sun out of the heavens, ^'un beau jour " .'' How must they be in- 
wardly indignant at hearing others, who thought fit to declare 
to them "that the vessel of the state would fly forward in her 
course towards regeneration with more speed than ever," from 
the stiff gale of treason and murder which preceded our preach- 
er's triumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward 
patience and inward indignation, they heard of the slaughter of 
innocent gentlemen in their houses, that " the blood spilled was 
not the most pure " ! What must they have felt, when they were 
besieged by complaints of disorder which shook their country 
to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell the com- 
plainants that they were under the protection of the law, and 
that they would address the king (the captive king) to cause 
the laws to be enforced for their protection ; when the enslaved 
ministers of that captive king had formally notified to them that 
there was neither law, nor authority, nor power left to protect! 
What they must have felt at being obliged, as a felicitation on 
the present new year, to request their captive king to forget the 
stormy period of the last, on account of the great good which he 
was likely to produce to his people; to the complete attainment 
of which good they adjourned the practical demonstrations of 
their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience, when he should 
no longer possess any authority to command! 

This address was made with much good-nature and affection, 
to be sure. But among the revolutions in France must be reck- 
oned a considerable revolution in their ideas of politeness. In 
England we are said to learn manners at second-hand from your 
side of the water, and that we dress our behavior in the frippery 
of France. If so, we are still in the old cut, and have not so far 
conformed to the new Parisian mode of good breeding as to 
think it quite in the most refined strain of delicate compliment 
(whether in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most 



I 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 585 

humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that great pub- 
lic benefits are derived from the m.urder of his servants, the 
attempted assassination of himself and of his wife, and the 
mortification, disgrace, and degradation that he has personally 
suffered. It is a topic of consolation which our ordinary of 
Newgate would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot of 
the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, 
now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, 
and is allowed his rank and arms in the Heralds' College of the 
Rights of Men, would be too generous, too gallant a man, too 
full of the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting con- 
solation to any of the persons whom the Use nation- might bring 
under the administration of his executive power. 

A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The ano- 
dyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to 
preserve a galHng wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a 
corroding memory. Thus to administer the opiate potion of 
amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con- 
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of " the balm of hurt minds," 
the cup of human misery full to the brim, and to force him to 
drink it to the dregs. 

Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those which were 
so dehcately urged in the compliment on the new year, the king 
of France will probably endeavor to forget these events and 
that compliment. But History, who keeps a durable record of 
all our acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceed- 
ings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget either those events 
or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of man- 
kind. History will record that, on the morning of the 6th of 
October, 1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day of 
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the 
pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours 
of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep 
the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her 
door, who cried out to her to save herself by flight — that this 
was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were 
upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A 
band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, 
rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hun- 
dred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence 



586 EDMUND BURKE 

this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, 
and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to 
seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his 
own hfe for a moment. 

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their 
infant children, who once would have been the pride and hope 
of a great and generous people, were then forced to abandon 
the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which 
they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed 
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcases. Thence they were 
conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been 
selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaugh- 
ter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who 
composed the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with 
all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and pub- 
hcly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court 
of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the 
procession ; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train 
were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling 
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all 
the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused 
shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to 
taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the 
slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six 
hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very sol- 
diers who had thus conducted them through this famous tri- 
umph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted 
into a Bastille for kings. 

Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to be commem- 
orated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine 
Humanity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation? — 
These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted in France, and ap- 
plauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic 
enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this king- 
dom; although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations 
of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean 
superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and 
decorous to compare it with the entrance into the world of the 
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a venerable 
sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of 
angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. . . . 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 587 

Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go 
to the length that in all probability it was intended it should be 
carried, yet I must think that such treatment of any human 
creatures must be shocking to any but those who are made for 
accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced 
by the inborn feeHngs of my nature, and not being illuminated 
by a single ray of this new-sprung modern Hght, I confess to 
you, Sir, that the exalted rank of the persons suffering, and 
particularly the sex, the beauty, and the amiable quahties of 
the descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender 
age of royal infants, insensible only through infancy and inno- 
cence of the cruel outrages to which their parents were exposed, 
instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my 
sensibility on that most melancholy occasion. 

I hear that the august person who was the principal object 
of our preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt 
much on that shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to 
feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his 
person, that were massacred in cold blood about him; as a 
prince, it became him to feel for the strange and frightful trans- 
formation of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for 
them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his 
fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. 
I am very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such person- 
ages are in a situation in which it is not becoming in us to praise 
the virtues of the great. 

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other 
object of the triumph, has borne that day (one is interested 
that beings made for suffering should suffer well) , and that she 
bears all the succeeding days, — that she bears the imprison- 
ment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her 
friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole 
weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in a 
manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring 
of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage ; that, 
like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with the dig- 
nity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will 
save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, 
she will fall by no ignoble hand. 

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw ^ he Queen of 



588 EDMUND BURKE 

France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never 
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more 
delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating 
and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, — 
glittering like the morning-star, full of life and splendor and 
joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to 
contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! 
Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those 
of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever 
be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed 
in that bosom ; little did I dream that I should have lived to see 
such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a 
nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thou- 
sand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge 
even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of 
chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculat- 
, ors has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished 
forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous 
loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified 
obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, 
even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The 
unbought grace of hfe, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse 
of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone ! It is gone, 
that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt 
a stain hke a wound, which inspired courage whilst it miti- 
gated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under 
which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. 

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin 
in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its 
appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted 
and influenced through a long succession of generations, even 
to the time we Hve in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, 
the loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which has given its char- 
acter to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it 
under all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its 
advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from those 
states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the 
antique world. It was this which, without confounding ranks, 
had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through 
all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which miti- 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 589 

gated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fel- 
lows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the 
fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to 
the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to 
submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws 
to be subdued by manners. 

> But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which 
made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the 
different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, 
incorporated into pohtics the sentiments which beautify and 
soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquer- 
ing empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of hfe 
is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished 
from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, 
and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the de- 
fects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in 
our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, 
and antiquated fashion. 

V On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but 
a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the 
highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, 
and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and 
folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege are but fictions 
of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its 
simpHcity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a 
father are only common homicide; and if the people are by any 
chance, or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of homicide much 
the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too 
severe a scrutiny. 

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the 
offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which 
is as void of soHd wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and ele- 
gance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and 
by the concern which each individual may find in them from 
his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own 
private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of 
every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left 
which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. 
On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions 
can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons, 



590 EDMUND BURKE 

so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attach- 
ment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is 
incapable of filling their place. These public affections, com- 
bined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, 
sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept 
given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construc- 
tion of poems, is equally true as to states: Non satis est pul- 
chra esse poemata, dulcia sunto.^ There ought to be a system 
of manners in every nation, which a well-formed mind would 
be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country 
ought to be lovely. 

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in 
which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and 
worse means for its support. The usurpation which, in order to 
subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, 
will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has ac- 
quired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, 
which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects 
from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds 
of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by prevent- 
ive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of 
grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all 
power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those 
who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when 
subjects are rebels from principle. 

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the 
loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have 
no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what 
port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in 
a flourishing condition the day on which your revolution was 
completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing to the 
spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as 
such causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must 
presume that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial. 

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we 
find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by 
which they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. 
Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civiliza- 

• "It does not sulSce that poems should be beautiful; they must be charming." — 
Horace. 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 591 

tion, and all the good things which are connected with manners \ 
and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, 
depended for ages upon two principles, and were indeed the 
result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and 
the spirit of religion. The nobihty and the clergy, the one by 
profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, 
even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst govern- 
ments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid 
back what it received to nobility and to priesthood, and paid 
it with usury, by enlarging their ideas and by furnishing their 
minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indis- 
soluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not 
debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the 
instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its 
natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the 
mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. 

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are 
always willing to own to ancient manners, so do other interests 
which we value full as much as they are worth. Even com- 
merce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical 
politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures; are them- 
selves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. 
They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning 
flourished. They too may decay with their natural protecting 
principles. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten 
to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are 
wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion 
remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their 
place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experi- 
ment to try how well a state may stand without these old 
fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of 
gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor and sordid, 
barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possess- 
ing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? 

I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, 
to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears 
a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the 
proceedings of the Assembly and of all their instructors. TheirY 
liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance^ 
Their humanity is savage and brutal. 



592 EDMUND BURKE 

It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand and 
decorous principles and manners, of which considerable traces 
yet remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. But 
to you, I think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be 
gentis incunabula nostrcB.^ France has always more or less influ- 
enced manners in England ; and when your fountain is choked 
up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, 
with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in 
my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is 
done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long 
on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have 
given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my 
mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, 
which may be dated from that day, — I mean a revolution in 
sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, 
with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an at- 
tempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is 
almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings 
of men. . . . 

A LETTER FROM THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND 
BURKE, TO A NOBLE LORD 

ON THE ATTACKS MADE UPON HIM AND HIS PENSION, IN 
THE HOUSE OF LORDS, BY THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND 
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE, EARLY IN THE PRESENT 
SESSION OF PARLIAMENT 

1796 

[In 1794 the Government proposed to make Burke a peer, in recognition 
of his long services to the state, but on the death of his son, which left him 
childless, the project was abandoned, and instead a pension of £3700 a 
year was conferred by the Crown. "By and by, when the resentment of 
the Opposition was roused to the highest pitch by the infamous Treason 
and Sedition bills of 1795, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Lauderdale, 
seeking to accumulate every possible complaint against the Government, 
assailed the grant to Burke, as made without the consent of Parliament, 
and as a violent contradiction to the whole policy of the plan for economic 
reform. The attack, if not justifiable in itself, came from an unlucky 
quarter. A chief of the house of Bedford was the most unfit person in the 
world to protest against grants by favor of the Crown. Burke was too 
1 "The cradle of our race." 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 593 

practiced a rhetorician not to see the opening, and his Letter to a Noble 
Lord is the most splendid repartee in the EngUsh language." (Morley: 
Burke, p. 198.)] 

. . . Astronomers have supposed that if a certain comet, 
whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth in some 
(I forget what) sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in 
its eccentric course, into God knows what regions of heat and 
cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, which 
"from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," and "with 
fear of change perplexes monarchs," — had that comet crossed 
upon us in that internal state of England, nothing human could 
have prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the high- 
way of heaven, into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries 
of the French Revolution. 

Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her hostihty was 
at a good distance. We had a Hmb cut off, but we preserved 
the body. We lost our colonies, but we kept our constitution. 
There was, indeed, much intestine heat; there was a dreadful 
fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, 
and prowled about our streets in the name of Reform. Such was 
the distemper of the public mind that there was no madman, in 
his maddest ideas and maddest projects, who might not count 
upon numbers to support his principles and execute his designs. 

Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called parlia- 
mentary reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors 
and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their cer- 
tain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the 
utter destruction of the constitution of this kingdom. Had 
they taken place, not France, but England, would have had 
the honor of leading up the death-dance of democratic revolu- 
tion. Other projects, exactly coincident in time with those, 
struck at the very existence of the kingdom under any consti- 
tution. There are who remember the blind fury of some, and 
the lamentable helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, 
from a panic fear of the danger; there, the same inaction from 
a stupid insensibihty to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief; 
there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of na- 
tional convention, dubious in its nature, and perilous in its 
example, nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority, sat 
with a sort of superintendence over it, and little less than die- 



594 EDMUND BURKE 

tated to it, not only laws, but the very form and essence of 
legislature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric 
course. Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a 
manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. I do not 
mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of 
admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile under- 
standing fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and 
pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most per- 
fectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by 
a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory of a great man, 
to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit 
of command, that the time required. Indeed a darkness, next 
to the fog of this awful day, lowered over the whole region. For 
a little time the helm appeared abandoned — 

Ipse diem noctemque negat disceniere ccelo, 
Nee meminisse vice media Palinurus in unda} 

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the 
community. They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bed- 
ford can do, and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps 
their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their character, 
and they cultivated what they loved.xThe liberty they pursued 
was a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue, from morals, 
and from religion, and was neither hypocritically nor fanatic- 
ally followed. They did not wish that hberty, in itself one of 
the first of blessings, should in its perversion become the great- 
est curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the con- 
stitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of 
its formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to 
them the first object. Popularity and power they regarded 
alike. These were with them only different means of obtaining 
that object, and had no preference over each other in their 
minds, but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less 
certain prospect of arriving at that end. It is some consolation 
to me, in the cheerless gloom which darkens the evening of my 
life, that with them I commenced my pohtical career, and never 
for a moment, in reality nor in appearance, for any length of 
time, was separated from their good wishes and good opinion. 

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but 

* "Palinurus himself says he cannot distinguish night from day, nor remember the way 
in the midst of the ocean." 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 595 

just then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy which 
ever has pursued me with a full cry through life, I had obtained 
a very considerable degree of public confidence. I know well 
enough how equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms 
of the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to the insecurity 
of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is mentioned to show, not 
how highly I prize the thing, but my right to value the use I 
made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advantage to 
myself into a permanent benefit to my country. Far am I from 
detracting from the merit of some gentlemen, out of office or in 
it, on that occasion. No! — It is not my way to refuse a full 
and heaped measure of justice to the aids that I receive. I have, 
through life, been willing to give everything to others, and to 
reserve nothing for myself but the inward conscience that I 
had omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to discipline, to 
direct the abilities of the country for its service, and to place 
them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it. This 
conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man, never 
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy or by 
any policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means (and 
they were always infinitely below my desires), to forward those 
abilities which overpowered my own. He is an ill-furnished 
undertaker who has no machinery but his own hands to work 
with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought myself rich in 
theirs. In that period of difficulty and danger more especially, 
I consulted and sincerely cooperated with men of all parties 
who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part of 
them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted; when it ap- 
peared, nothing to subdue it was left uncounseled nor unex- 
ecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the time I speak of, and 
having a momentary lead, so aided and so encouraged, and as a 
feeble instrument in a mighty hand, — I do not say I saved my 
country; I am sure I did my country important service. There 
were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge it; and 
that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no 
man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision 
should be made for him. 

So much for my general conduct through the whole of the 
portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general sense then 
entertained of that conduct by my country. But my character 



596 EDMUND BURKE 

as a reformer, in the particular instances which the Duke of 
Bedford refers to, is so connected in principle with my opinions 
on the hideous changes which have since barbarized France, 
and, spreading thence, threatened the pohtical and moral order 
of the whole world, that it seems to demand something of a 
more detailed discussion. 

My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, the 
suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. 
Economy in my plans was, as it ought to be, secondary, sub- 
ordinate, instrumental. I acted on state principles. I found a 
great distemper in the commonwealth, and, according to the 
nature of the evil and of the object, I treated it. The malady 
was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the symp- 
toms. Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand, 
government, daily growing more invidious from an apparent 
increase of the means of strength, was every day growing more 
contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this dissolution con- 
fined to government commonly so called. It extended to Parlia- 
ment, which was losing not a httle in its dignity and estimation, 
by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the other 
hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly in- 
fused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate 
a manner, with regard to the economical object (for I set aside 
for a moment the dreadful tampering with the body of the con- 
stitution itself), that, if their petitions had literally been com- 
plied with, the state would have been convulsed, and a gate 
would have been opened through which all property might be 
sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have saved the public from 
the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which would 
soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into dis- 
credit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of 
the people, who would know they had failed in the accompHsh- 
ment of their wishes, but who, Hke the rest of mankind in all 
ages, would impute the blame to anything rather than to their 
own proceedings. But there were then persons in the world 
who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly 
disappointed if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of that 
humor. I wished that they should be satisfied. It was my aim 
to give to the people the substance of what I knew they de- 
sired, and what I thought was right, whether they desired it or 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 597 

not, before it had been modified for them into senseless peti- 
tions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, 
which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any de- 
sign, will constantly be confounding, — that is, a marked dis- 
tinction between change and reformation. The former alters 
the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their 
essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to 
them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one 
of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not con- 
tradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, 
cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is not a change 
in the substance, or in the primary modification, of the object, 
but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance com- 
plained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops 
there; and, if it fails, the substance which underwent the opera- 
tion, at the very worst, is but where it was. 

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said else- 
where. It cannot at this time be too often repeated, — fine 
upon line, precept upon precept, — until it comes into the 
currency of a proverb : t(i innovate is not to reJorm\ The French 
revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform 
anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all unchanged. 
The consequences are before us, — not in remote history; not in 
future prognostication; — they are about us; they are upon 
us. They shake the public security ; they menace private enjoy- 
ment. They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the 
quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infest 
us in town ; they pursue us to the country. Our business is in- 
terrupted; our repose is troubled; our pleasures are saddened; 
our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is 
rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this 
dreadful innovation. The revolution harpies of France, sprung 
from Night and Hell, or from that chaotic Anarchy which gener- 
ates equivocally "all monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo- 
like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch 
them in the nest of every neighboring state. These obscene 
harpies, who deck themselves in I know not what divine 
attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds 
of prey (both mothers and daughters), flutter over our heads, 
and souse down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, 



598 EDMUND BURKE 

unrifled, unravaged, or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy 
offal. . . . 

Does his Grace think that they who advised the Crown to 
make my retreat easy, considered me only as an economist? 
That, well understood, however, is a good deal. If I had not 
deemed it of some value, I should not have made political 
economy an object of my humble studies, from my very early 
youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even before 
(at least to any knowledge of mine) it had employed the 
thoughts of speculative men in other parts of Europe. At that 
time it was still in its infancy in England, where, in the last 
century, it had its origin. Great and learned men thought my 
studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned to com- 
municate with me now and then on some particulars of their 
immortal works. Something of these studies may appear inci- 
dentally in some of the earliest things I published. The House 
has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more 
or less, for above eight-and-twenty years. 

To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his 
Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a 
legislator; '^ Nitor in adversum'^ is the motto of a man like me. 
I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the 
arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the 
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As httle did I fol- 
low the trade of winning the hearts, by imposing on the under- 
standings, of the people. At every step of my progress in life 
(for in every step was I traversed and opposed), and at every 
turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again 
and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to 
my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with 
its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at 
home. Otherwise no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no 
arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, 
in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to 
the last gasp will I stand. . . . 

The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my own 
justification, is my true object in what I now write, or in what 
I shall ever write or say. It little signifies to the world what 
becomes of such things as me, or even as the Duke of Bedford. 
What I say about either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, as 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 599 

you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my sentiments on 
matters far more worthy of your attention. It is when I stick 
to my apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not when 
I depart from it. I therefore must beg your Lordship's pardon 
for again resuming it after this very short digression, — assuring 
you that I shall never altogether lose sight of such matter as 
persons abler than I am may turn to some profit. 

The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the 
attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, 
which he considers as excessive, and out of all bounds. 

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems that, 
whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure 
upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke 
of Bedford may dream ; and as dreams (even his golden dreams) 
are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his 
Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the sub-y 
ject-matter from the crown grants to his own family. This is 
"the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of put- 
ting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The 
grants to the house of Russell were so enormous as not only to 
outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke 
of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the 
Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and 
frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and 
whilst "he hes floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His 
ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles 
through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, 
and covers me all over with the spray, — everything of him and 
about him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dis- 
pensation of the royal favor? 

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the 
public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he 
holds, and these services of mine, on the favorable construc- 
tion of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disap- 
proves. In private life, I have not at all the honor of acquaint- 
ance with the noble Duke. But I ought to presume, and it 
costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the es- 
teem and love of all who five with him. But as to public service, 
why, truly it would not be more ridiculous for me to com- 
pare myself in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, 



6oo EDMUND BURKE 

strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a 
parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to 
my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, 
to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the 
idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were ob- 
tained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal; 
his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, 
that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes 
his Grace so very delicate and exceptions about the merit of all 
other grantees of the Crown. Had he permitted me to remain 
in quiet, I should have said, " 'T is his estate; that's enough. 
It is his by law; what have I to do with it or its history?" He 
would naturally have said on his side, " 'T is this man's fortune. 
He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty 
years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions; he is an 
old man with very young pensions, — that's all." 

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to 
compare my little merit with that which obtained from the 
Crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tram- 
ples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals? 
I would willingly leave him to the Heralds' College, which the 
philosophy of the sans-culottes (prouder by far than all the 
Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge Dragons 
that ever pranced in a procession of what his friends call aris- 
tocrats and despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. 
These historians, recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms 
differ wholly from that other description of historians, who 
never assign any act of politicians to a good motive. These 
gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their pens in nothing but 
the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for merit 
than the preamble of a patent, or the inscription on a tomb. 
With them every man created a peer is first a hero ready-made. 
They judge of every man's capacity for office by the offices he 
has filled, and the more offices the more ability. Every general 
officer with them is a Marlborough; every statesman a Bur- 
leigh; every judge a Murray or a Yorke. They who, alive, were 
laughed at or pitied by all their acquaintance, make as good a 
figure as the best of them in the pages of Guilhm, Edmondson, 
and Collins. 

To these recorders, so full of good -nature to the great and 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 6oi 

prosperous, I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell and 
Earl of Bedford, and the merits of his grants. But the aulnager, 
the weigher, the meter of grants, will not suffer us to acquiesce in 
the judgment of the prince reigning at the time when they were 
made. They are never good to those who earn them. Well, 
then, since the new grantees have war made on them by the old, 
and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn 
our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure 
in contemplating the heroic origin of their house. 

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, 
was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, 
raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there gener- 
ally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, 
the favorite was in all likelihood much such another as his mas- 
ter. , The first of those immoderate grants was not taken from 
the ancient demesne of the Crown, but from the recent confis- 
cation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having 
sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the 
jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, 
the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favor- 
ite's first grant was from the lay nobiHty. The second, infin- 
itely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the 
plunder of the Church. In truth his Grace is somewhat excus- 
able for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity 
but in its kind so different from his own. 

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from 
Henry the EigEth. 

Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person 
of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending 
men. His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated 
funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions 
voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors, with the 
gibbet at their door. 

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of 
being a prompt and greedy instrument of a leveling tyrant, who 
oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with par- 
ticular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has 
been, in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from 
oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, 
who in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief 



6o2 EDMUND BURKE 

governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to 
jealousy, avarice, and envy. 

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was 
in giving his hand to the work and partaking the spoil, with a 
prince who plundered a part of the national church of his time 
and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national 
church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of 
the national churches of all countries, from the principles and 
the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, — thence to a 
contempt of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all 
property, and thence to universal desolation. 

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a 
favorite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to their 
native country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the 
municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions 
and denominations in it. Mine was to support with unrelaxing 
vigilance every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this 
my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive country; 
and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, 
but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language, 
and religion, in the vast domain that is still under the protec- 
tion, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the 
British Crown. 

His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his 
master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, 
and depopulation on his country. Mine were, under a bene- 
volent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and 
agriculture of his kingdom; in which his Majesty shows an 
eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and 
in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. 

His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by 
the arts of a court, and the protection of a Wolsey, to the em- 
inence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence 
was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people 
to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober part of the 
country, that they might put themselves on their guard against 
any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent lords, or 
any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they 
should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the re- 
verse order, — that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 603 

rebellion, and, through that rebelhon, introducing a tyranny yet 
worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, 
and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despot- 
ism of Henry the Eighth. 

The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house 
was that of being concerned as a counselor of state in advising, 
and in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonorable 
peace with France; the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, 
then our out-guard on the Continent. By that surrender, 
Calais, the key of France, and the bridle in the mouth of that 
power, was, not many years afterwards, finally lost. My merit 
has been in resisting the power and pride of France, under any 
form of its rule, but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and 
earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could 
assume, — the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and prin- 
ciple of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by 
every means to excite a spirit in the House where I had the 
honor of a seat, for carrying on, with early vigor and decision, 
the most clearly just and necessary war that this or any nation 
ever carried on, in order to save my country from the iron yoke 
of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its prin- 
ciples; to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and 
untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and 
good humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pest- 
ilence which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the 
whole moral, and in a great degree the whole physical world, 
having done both in the focus of its most intense malignity. 

The labors of his Grace's founder merited the curses, not 
loud but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom he and 
his master had effected a complete parliamentary reform, by 
making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and 
adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone 
people. My merits were, in having had an active though not 
always an ostentatious share, in every one act, without excep- 
tion, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in 
having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, 
and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended 
my services by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their 
own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication of 
their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things to merit 



6o4 EDMUND BURKE 

their inward approbation, and (along with the assistance of the 
largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavors) I received their 
free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks. 

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the 
crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune 
as balanced against mine. In the name of common sense, why- 
should the Duke of Bedford think that none but of the house of 
Russell are entitled to the favor of the Crown? Why should he 
imagine that no king of England has been capable of judging 
of merit but King Henry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon 
me; he is a little mistaken; all virtue did not end in the first 
Earl of Bedford. All discernment did not lose its vision when 
his creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigor on the dis- 
proportion between merit and reward in others, and they will 
make no inquiry into the origin of his fortune. They will regard 
with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate with in- 
finitely more advantage, whatever in his pedigree has been 
dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long 
flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture 
of the spring. It is little to be doubted that several of his fore- 
fathers in that long series have degenerated into honor and 
virtue. Let the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with 
scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those wicked 
panders to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him, in the 
troubles of his country, to seek another enormous fortune from 
the forfeitures of another nobility, and the plunder of another 
church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the 
energy of his youth, and all the resources of his wealth, to crush 
rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and 
rebellious movements that have no provocation in tyranny. 

Then will be forgot the rebelHons which, by a doubtful 
priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. 
On such a conduct in the noble Duke, many of his countrymen 
might — and with some excuse might — give way to the enthu- 
siasm of their gratitude, and, in the dashing style of some of the 
old declaimers, cry out that, if the Fates had found no other way 
in which they could give a Duke of Bedford and his opulence 
as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the Duke of 
Buckingham might be tolerated; it might be regarded even 
with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 605 

the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who suffer under 
the cruel confiscation of this day; whilst they beheld with 
admiration his zealous protection of the virtuous and loyal 
nobility of France, and his manly support of his brethren, the 
yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his 
Grace's merit would be pure, and new, and sharp, as fresh from 
the mint of honor. As he pleased, he might reflect honor on his 
predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed 
him. He might be the propagator of the stock of honor, or the 
root of it, as he thought proper. 

Had it pleased God to continue tome the hopes of succession, 
I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the medi- 
ocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should 
have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit 
can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in 
honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, 
and every hberal accomplishment, would not have shown him-- 
self inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he 
traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all 
plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged 
more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every 
deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would 
not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant, 
wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in 
himself a saHent, hving spring of generous and manly action. 
Every day he lived he would have repurchased the bounty of 
the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had re- 
ceived. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment 
whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent 
moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. 

But a Disposer whose power we are Httle able to resist, and 
whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained 
it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness 
might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me ; and 
I He like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scat- 
tered about me. I am stripped of all my honors, I am torn up 
by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth. There, and pros- 
trate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, 
and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself 
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the 



6o6 EDMUND BURKE 

attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job 
is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our 
irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and 
ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, 
and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill- 
natured neighbors of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, 
political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I 
have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I 
greatly deceive myself if in this hard season I would give a peck 
of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. 
This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, 
it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all 
of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain 
and poverty and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direc- 
' tion of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted 
order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. 
They who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of 
ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist 
in memory) that act of piety which he would have performed to 
me; I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as the 
Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent. 

The Crown has considered me after long service ; the Crown 
has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance. He has had a long 
credit for any service which he may perform hereafter. He is 
secure — and long may he be secure — in his advance, whether 
he performs any services or not. But let him take care how he 
endangers the safety of that constitution which secures his own 
utility or his own insignificance; or how he discourages those 
who take up even puny arms, to defend an order of things 
which, Hke the sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the 
worthless. His grants are ingrafted on the public law of Europe, 
covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. They are 
guarded by the sacred rules of prescription, found in that full 
treasury of jurisprudence from which the jejuneness and penury 
of our municipal law has, by degrees, been enriched and 
strengthened. This prescription I had my share (a very full 
share) in bringing to its perfection. The Duke of Bedford will 
stand as long as prescriptive law endures; as long as the great 
stable laws of property, common to us with all civilized na- 
tions, are kept in their integrity, and without the smallest inter- 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 607^ 

mixture of laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the Grand 
Revolution. They are secure against all changes but one. The 
whole revolutionary system — institutes, digest, code, novels, 
text, gloss, comment — are not only not the same, but they 
are the very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all the 
laws on which civil hfe has hitherto been upheld in all the gov- 
ernments of the world. The learned professors of the Rights of 
Man regard prescription, not as a title to bar all claim set up 
against all possession — but they look on prescription as itself 
a bar against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an im- 
memorial possession to be no more than a long-continued, and 
therefore an aggravated, injustice. 

Such are their ideas; such their religion, and such their law. 
But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-com- 
pacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the 
holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, de- 
fended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand in- 
violate on the brow of the British Sion,^ — as long as the British 
monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the 
state, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty 
of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and 
coeval towers, — as long as this awful structure shall oversee 
and guard the subjected land,— -so long the mounds and dikes 
of the low, fat Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all 
the pickaxes of all the levelers of France. As long as our sov- 
ereign lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and 
Commons of this realm, — - the triple cord, which no man can 
break; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this 
nation; the firm guarantees of each other's being and each 
other's rights; the joint and several securities, each in its place 
and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of 
dignity; — as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bed- 
ford is safe, and we are all safe together — the high from the 
bhghts of envy and the spohations of rapacity; the low from 
the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. 
Amen! and so be it: and so it will be, — 

Dum domus Mnecz Capitoli immobile saxum 
Accolet, imperiumque paler Romanus hahehit} 

1 "While the race of ^neas shall dwell by the immovable rock of the Capitol, and 
Jupiter Capitolinus hold sway." 



6o8 EDMUND BURKE 

But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophistical 
Rights of Man to falsify the account, and its sword as a make- 
weight to throw into the scale, shall be introduced into our city 
by a misguided populace, set on by proud great men, themselves 
bHnded and intoxicated by a frantic ambition, we shall all of us 
perish and be overwhelmed in a common ruin. If a great storm 
blow on our coast, it will cast the whales on the strand as well 
as the periwinkles. His Grace will not survive the poor grantee 
he despises, — no, not for a twelvemonth. If the great look for 
safety in the services they render to this Gallic cause, it is to 
be foolish, even above the weight of privilege allowed to wealth. 
If his Grace be one of these whom they endeavor to proselytize, 
he ought to be aware of the character of the sect whose doctrines 
he is invited to embrace. With them insurrection is the most 
sacred of revolutionary duties to the state. Ingratitude to bene- 
factors is the first of revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude is in- 
deed their four cardinal virtues compacted and amalgamated 
into one; and he will find it in everything that has happened 
since the commencement of the philosophic Revolution to this 
hour. If he pleads the merit of having performed the duty of 
insurrection against the order he lives in (God forbid he ever 
should), the merit of others will be to perform the duty of in- 
surrection against him. If he pleads (again God forbid he 
should, and I do not suspect he will) his ingratitude to the Crown 
for its creation of his family, others will plead their right 
and duty to pay him in kind. They will laugh — indeed they 
will laugh — at his parchment and his wax. His deeds will be 
drawn out with the rest of the lumber of his evidence- room, 
and burnt to the tune of ga ira in the courts of Bedford (then 
Equahty) House. 

Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile re- 
proaches to me with a friendly admonition to himself ? Can I' 
be blamed for pointing out to him in what manner he is likely 
to be affected, if the sect of the cannibal philosophers of France 
should proselytize any considerable part of this people, and, by 
their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer that government 
to which his Grace does not seem to me to give all the support 
his own security demands? Surely it is proper that he, and that 
others hke him, should know the true genius of this sect: — 
what their opinions are, what they have done, and to whom; 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 609 

and what (if a prognostic is to be formed from the dispositions 
and actions of men) it is certain they will do hereafter. He 
ought to know that they have sworn assistance — the only 
engagement they ever will keep — to all in this country who 
bear a resemblance to themselves, and who think, as such, that 
"the whole duty of man" consists in destruction. They are 
a misaUied and disparaged branch of the house of Nimrod. 
They are the Duke of Bedford's natural hunters; and he is their 
natural game. Because he is not very profoundly reflecting, 
he sleeps in profound' security ; they, on the contrary, are always 
vigilant, active, enterprising, and, though far removed from 
any knowledge which makes men estimable or useful, in all the 
instruments and resources of evil their leaders are not meanly 
instructed, or insufficiently furnished. In the French Revolu- 
tion everything is new; and, from want of preparation to meet 
so unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. Never before 
this time was a set of literary men converted into a gang of 
robbers and assassins. Never before did a den of bravoes 
and banditti assume the garb and tone of an academy of phil- 
osophers. 

Let me tell his Grace that an union of such characters, mon- 
strous as it seems, is not made for producing despicable ene- 
mies. But if they are formidable as foes, as friends they are 
dreadful indeed. The men of property in France, confiding in a 
force which seemed to be irresistible because it had never been 
tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict with their enemies at 
their own weapons. They were found in such a situation as the 
Mexicans were, when they were attacked by the dogs, the 
cavalry, the iron, and the gunpowder, of a handful of bearded 
men whom they did not know to exist in nature. This is a com- 
parison that some, I think, have made; and it is just. In France 
they had their enemies within their houses. They were even in 
the bosoms of many of them. But they had not the sagacity to 
discern their savage character. They seemed tame, and even 
caressing. They had nothing but douce humanite in their mouth. 
They could not bear the punishment of the mildest laws on the 
greatest criminals. The slightest severity of justice made their 
flesh creep. The very idea that war existed in the world dis- 
turbed their repose. Military glory was no more, with them, 
than a splendid infamy. Hardly would they hear of self-defense, 



6io EDMUND BURKE 

which they reduced within such bounds as to leave it no defense 
at all. All this while they meditated the confiscations and mas- 
sacres we have seen. Had any one told these unfortunate noble- 
men and gentlemen how, and by whom, the grand fabric of the 
French monarchy under which they flourished would be sub- 
verted, they would not have pitied him as a visionary, but 
would have turned from him as what they call a mauvais 
plaisant. Yet we have seen what has happened. The persons 
who have suffered from the cannibal philosophy of France are 
so hke the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's 
probably not speaking quite so good French could enable us 
to find out any difference. A great many of them had as pomp- 
ous titles as he, and were of full as illustrious a race; some few 
of them had fortunes as ample; several of them, without mean- 
ing the least disparagement to the Duke of Bedford, were as 
wise, and as virtuous, and as vahant, and as well educated, and 
as complete in all the hneaments of men of honor, as he is; and 
to all this they had added the powerful out-guard of a military 
profession, which, in its nature, renders men somewhat more 
cautious than those who have nothing to attend to but the lazy 
enjoyment of undisturbed possessions. But security was their 
ruin. They are dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores 
are covered with the wrecks. If they had been aware that such 
a thing might happen, such a thing never could have happened. 
I assure his Grace that, if I state to him the designs of his 
enemies in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous and 
impossible, I tell him nothing that has not exactly happened, 
point by point, but twenty-four miles from our own shore. I 
assure him that the Frenchified faction, more encouraged than 
others are warned by what has happened in France, look at him 
and his landed possessions as an object at once of curiosity and 
rapacity. He is made for them in every part of their double 
character. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty; as speculat- 
ists, he is a glorious subject for their experimental philosophy. 
He affords matter for an extensive analysis in all the branches 
of their science, geometrical, physical, civil, and political. 
These philosophers are fanatics; independent of any interest, 
which if it operated alone would make them much more tract- 
able, they are carried with such a headlong rage towards every 
desperate trial, that they would sacrifice the whole human race 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 6ii 

to the slightest of their experiments. I am better able to enter 
into the character of this description of men than the noble Duke 
can be. I have lived long and variously in the world. Without 
any considerable pretensions to literature in myself, I have 
aspired to the love of letters. I have lived for a great many 
years in habitudes with those who professed them. I can form 
a tolerable estimate of what is hkely to happen from a char- 
acter chiefly dependent for fame and fortune on knowledge and 
talent, as well in its morbid and perverted state as in that 
which is sound and natural. Naturally men so formed and fin- 
ished are the first gifts of Providence to the world. But when 
they have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in all ages 
too often the case, and the fear of man, which is now the case, 
and when in that state they come to understand one another, 
and to act in corps, a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of 
hell to scourge mankind. Nothing can be conceived more hard 
than the heart of a thoroughbred metaphysician. It comes 
nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty 
and passion of a man. It is like that of the principle of evil him- 
self, — incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated 
evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity from the 
human breast. What Shakespeare calls "the compunctious 
visitings of nature" will sometimes knock at their hearts, and 
protest against their murderous speculations. But they have 
a means of compounding with their nature. Their humanity is 
not dissolved; they only give it a long prorogation. They are 
ready to declare that they do not think two thousand years too 
long a period for the good that they pursue. It is remarkable 
that they never see any way to their projected good but by the 
road of some evil. Their imagination is not fatigued with the 
contemplation of human suffering through the wild waste of 
centuries added to centuries of misery and desolation. Their 
humanity is at their horizon — and, hke the horizon, it always 
flies before them. The geometricians and the chemists bring, 
the one from the dry bones of their diagrams, and the other 
from the soot of their furnaces, dispositions that make them 
worse than indifferent about those feehngs and habitudes which 
are the supports of the moral world. Ambition is come upon 
them suddenly ; they are intoxicated with it, and it has rendered 
them fearless of the danger which may from thence arise to 



6i2 EDMUND BURKE 

others or to themselves. These philosophers consider men, in 
their experiments, no more than they do mice in an air-pump 
or in a recipient of mephitic gas. Whatever his Grace may 
think of himself, they look upon him, and everything that 
belongs to him, with no more regard than they do upon the 
whiskers of that little long-tailed animal that has been long 
the game of the grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet- 
pawed, green-eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs 
or upon four. 

His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an 
agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon the 
Rights of Man. They are more extensive than the territory of 
many of the Grecian republics, and they are without compari- 
son more fertile than most of them. There are now republics in 
Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do not possess 
anything like so fair and ample a domain. There is scope for 
seven philosophers to proceed in their analytical experiments 
upon Harrington's seven different forms of republics, in the 
acres of this one Duke. Hitherto they have been wholly unpro- 
ductive to speculation, — fitted for 'nothing but to fatten bul- 
locks, and to produce grain for beer, still more to stupefy the 
dull English understanding. Abbe Sieyes has whole nests of 
pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready-made, ticketed, sorted, 
and numbered; suited to every season and every fancy: some 
with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the 
bottom at the top; some plain, some flowered; some distin- 
guished for their simplicity, others for their complexity; some 
of blood color, some of boue de Paris; some with directories, 
others without a direction; some with councils of elders, and 
councils of youngsters; some without any council at all. Some 
where the electors choose the representatives; others, where the 
representatives choose the electors. Some in long coats, and 
some in short coats; some with pantaloons; some without 
breeches. Some with five-shilling qualifications; some totally 
unquahfied. So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited 
from his shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, oppression, 
arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judg- 
ment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any shapes into 
which they can be put. What a pity it is that the progress of 
experimental philosophy should be checked by his Grace's 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 613 

monopoly! Such are their sentiments, I assure him; such is 
their language, when they dare to speak; and such are their 
proceedings, when they have the means to act. 

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time 
out of practice. It is some time since they have divided their 
own country into squares. That figure has lost the charms of its 
novelty. They want new lands for new trials. It is not only the 
geometricians of the Republic that find him a good subject; the 
chemists have bespoke him, after the geometricians have done 
with him. As the first set have an eye on his Grace's lands, the 
chemists are not less taken with his buildings. They consider 
mortar as a very anti-revolutionary invention, in its present 
state, but, properly employed, an admirable material for over- 
turning all establishments. They have found that the gun- 
powder of ruins is far the fittest for making other ruins, and 
so ad infinitum. They have calculated what quantity of matter 
convertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Wo- 
burn Abbey, and in what his Grace and his trustees have still 
suffered to stand of that foolish royalist, Inigo Jones, in Covent 
Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffee-houses, all alike are 
destined to be mingled, and equalized, and blended into one 
common rubbish; and, well sifted and Hxiviated, to crystallize 
into true, democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their 
academy del Cimento^ (per antiphrasin), with Morveau and 
Hassenfratz at its head, have computed that the brave sans- 
culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a 
twelve-month, out of the rubbish of the Duke of Bedford's 
buildings. 

While the Morveaus and Priestleys are proceeding with these 
experiments upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the Sieyes, 
and the rest of the analytical legislators and constitution- 
venders, are quite as busy in their trade of decomposing organ- 
ization, in forming his Grace's vassals into primary assemblies, 
national guards, first, second, and third requisitioners, com- 
mittees of research, conductors of the travehng guillotine, 
judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen, super- 
visors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and 
assessors of the maximum. 

' Experiment. In speaking of the term as standing for its opposite (per antiphrasin) 
Burke apparently alludes to its resemblance to cement. 



6i4, EDMUND BURKE 

^The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly 
wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavor to save 
some httle matter from their experimental philosophy. If he 
pleads his grants from the Crown, he is ruined at the outset. 
If he pleads he has received them from the pillage of supersti- 
tious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a little, be- 
cause they are enemies to all corporations, and to all religion. 
However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell his 
Grace, or his learned counsel, that all such property belongs to 
the nation; and that it would be more wise for him, if he wishes 
to live the natural term of a citizen (that is, according to Con- 
dorcet's calculation, six months on an average), not to pass 
for an usurper upon the national property. This is what the 
Serjeants at law of the Rights of Man will say to the puny 
apprentices of the common law of England. 

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You may as well 
think the garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the 
cords of ribbon insultingly stretched by the National Assembly 
to keep the sovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement 
of the poor King of the French, as that such flimsy cobwebs 
will stand between the savages of the Revolution and their 
natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers; brave sans- 
culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis 
of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn 
will not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of 
Woburn; they will make no difference between the superior of 
a Covent Garden of nuns, and of a Covent Garden of another 
description. They will not care a rush whether his coat is long 
or short; whether the color be purple or blue-and-buff. They 
will not trouble their heads with what part of his head his hair is 
cut from ; and they will look with equal respect on a tonsure and 
a crop. Their only question will be that of their Legendre, or 
some other of their legislative butchers, — how he cuts up? 
how he tallows in the caul, or on the kidneys ? 

Is it not a singular phenomenon that, whilst the sans-culotte 
carcass-butchers and the philosophers of the shambles are 
pricking their dotted lines upon his hide, and, Hke the print of 
the poor ox that we see in the shop-windows at Charing Cross, 
alive as he is, and thinking no harm in the world, he is divided 
into rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into all sorts of 



LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 615 

pieces for roasting, boiling, and stewing, — that, all the while 
they are measuring him, his Grace is measuring me, — is in- 
vidiously comparing the bounty of the Crown with the deserts 
of the defender of his order, and in the same moment fawning 
on those who have the knife half out of the sheath? Poor inno- 
cent! 

Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, 

And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. . . . 



THOMAS PAINE 

THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
1791 

[Paine was a citizen of the world rather than of any single nation; this 
work appeared while he was living, now in England, now in France, be- 
tween the first and second periods of his American residence. The pam- 
phlet is a reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution (see the introduc- 
tory note to the extracts from that work, page 576, above). It sold very 
rapidly, and circulated largely in America and in France as well as in 
England. A second part followed in 1792. The following extracts are from 
the first part.] 

. . . Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles, when 
he is contemplating governments. " Ten years ago," says he, 'T 
could have felicitated France on her having a government, 
without inquiring what the nature of that government was or 
how it was administered." Is this the language of a rational 
man? Is it the language of a heart feeling as it ought to feel for 
the rights and happiness of the human race? On this ground, 
Mr. Burke must compliment all the governments in the world, 
while the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into 
slavery or tortured out of existence, are wholly forgotten. It is 
power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates; and under 
this abominable depravity, he is disqualified to judge between 
them. Thus much for his opinion as to the occasion of the 
French Revolution. I now proceed to other considerations. 

I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because, as 
you proceed along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's 
language, it continually recedes, and presents itself at a distance 
before you; and when you have got as far as you can go, there 
is no point at all. Just thus it is with Mr. Burke's three hun- 
dred and sixty-six pages. It is therefore difficult to reply to 
him. But as the points that he wished to establish may be 
inferred from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that we 
must look for his arguments. 

As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged 



THE RIGHTS OF MAN 617 

his own imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his read- 
ers, they are very well calculated for theatrical representation, 
where facts are manufactured for the sake of show, and accom- 
modated to produce, through the weakness of sympathy, a 
weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should recollect that he is writ- 
ing history, and not plays; and that his readers will expect 
truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned declamation. 

When we see a man dramatically lamenting, in a publication 
intended to be beHeved, that ''the age of chivalry is gone"; 
that " the glory of Europe is extinguished forever! " ; that " the 
unbought grace of life [if any one knows what it is], the cheap 
defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic 
enterprise, is gone I "i; and all this because the Quixote age of 
chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we form of his 
judgment, or what regard can we pay to his facts? In the rhap- 
sody of his imagination, he has discovered a world of windmills, 
and his sorrows are that there are no Quixotes to attack them. 
But if the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should fall, 
— and they had originally some connection, — Mr. Burke, the 
trumpeter of the order, may continue his parody to the end, 
and finish with exclaiming, "Othello's occupation's gone!" 

Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the 
French Revolution is compared with the revolutions of other 
countries, the astonishment will be that it is marked with so few 
sacrifices; but this astonishment will cease when we reflect 
that principles, and not persons, were the meditated objects of 
destruction. The mind of the nation was acted upon by a higher 
stimulus than what the consideration of persons could inspire, 
and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the 
downfall of an enemy. Among the few who fell, there do not 
appear to be any that were intentionally singled out. They all 
of them had their fate in the circumstances of the moment, and 
were not pursued with that long, cold-blooded, unabated re- 
venge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 

1745- 

Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe 
that the .Bastille is mentioned more than once, and that with 
a kind of implication as if he were sorry it was pulled down, and 
wished it were built up again. "We have rebuilt Newgate [says 

I See page 588, above. 



6i8 THOMAS PAINE 

he] and tenanted the mansion; and we have prisons almost as 
strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the queens of 
France." As to what a madman, like the person called Lord 
George Gordon, might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a 
bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy a rational consideration. 
It was a madman that libeled — and that is sufficient apology, 
and it afforded an opportunity for confining him, which was the 
thing that was wished for. But certain it is that Mr. Burke, who 
does not call himself a madman, whatever other people may do, 
has libeled, in the most unprovoked manner, and in the grossest 
style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative author- 
ity of France; and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British 
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence 
on some points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to 
believe that Mr. Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbi- 
trary power — the power of the Pope and the Bastille — are 
pulled down. 

Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflec- 
tion, that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on 
those who lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life with- 
out hope in the most miserable of prisons. It is painful to be- 
hold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature 
has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he has to her. He is not 
affected by the reahty of distress touching his heart, but 
by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He 
pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to 
kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him from him- 
self, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the genuine 
soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a 
tragedy victim, expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of 
misery, shding into death in the silence of a dungeon. . . . 

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, cer- 
tain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be estab- 
lished, admitted, or denied. Mr. Burke, with his usual outrage, 
abuses the Declaration of the Rights of Man, published by the 
National Assembly of France, as the basis on which the con- 
stitution of France is built. This he calls "paltry and blurred 
sheets of paper about the rights of man." Does Mr. Burke 
mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must 
mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that 



THE RIGHTS OF MAN 619' 

he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? 
But if Mr. Burke means to admit that man has rights, the ques- 
tion then will be. What are those rights, and how came man by 
them originally? 

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from an- 
tiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far 
enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They 
stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a 
thousand years, and produce what was then done as a rule for 
the present day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still 
farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opin- 
ion and practice prevaihng; and, if antiquity is to be authority, 
a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively 
contradicting each other. But if we proceed on, we shall at 
last come out right; we shall come to the time when man came 
from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man 
was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. 
But of titles I shall speak hereafter. 

We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of 
his rights. As to the manner in which the world has been 
governed from that day to this, it is no farther any concern 
of ours than to make a proper use of the errors or the improve- 
ments which the history of it presents. Those who lived a 
hundred or a thousand years ago were then moderns, as we are 
now. They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, 
and we also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of 
antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are 
to live an hundred or a thousand years hence may as well take 
us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived 
an hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions 
of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is 
authority against authority all the way, till we come to the 
divine origin of the rights of man, at the creation. Here our 
inquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If 
a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of 
an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of author- 
ity they must have referred, and it is to the same source of 
authority that we must now refer. 

Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of 
religion, yet it may be worth observing that the genealogy of 



620 THOMAS PAINE 

Christ is traced to Adam. Why, then, not trace the rights of 
man to the creation of man? I will answer the question. Be- 
cause there have been upstart governments, thrusting them- 
selves between, and presumptuously working to un-make man. 

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictat- 
ing the mode by which the world should be governed forever, 
it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation 
did not do it, no succeeding generation can show any authority 
for doing it, nor can set any up. The illuminating and divine 
principles of the equal rights of man (for it has its origin from 
the Maker of man) relates not only to the living individuals, but 
to generations of men succeeding each other. Every generation 
is equal in rights to the generations which preceded it, by the 
same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his 
contemporary. 

Every history of the creation, and every traditionary ac- 
count, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however 
they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, 
all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man ; by which 
I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that 
all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same 
manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead 
of generation, the latter being only the mode by which the for- 
mer is carried forward; and consequently, every child born into 
the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. 
The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that ex- 
isted, and his natural right in it is of the same kind. 

The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine 
authority or merely historical, is full to this point, the unity 
or equality of man. The expression admits of no contro- 
versy. "And God said, let us make man in our image. In 
the image of God created he him; male and female created he 
them." The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other 
distinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority, it 
is at least historical authority, and shows that the equahty of 
man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon 
record. 

It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the 
world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of 
man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, 



THE RIGHTS OF MAN 621 

or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, 
the good and the bad are the only distinctions. Nay, even the 
laws of governments are obliged to slide into this principle, by 
making degrees to consist in crimes, and not in persons. 

It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest 
advantage to cultivate. By considering man in this light, and 
by instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places 
him in a close connection with all his duties, whether to 
his Creator, or to the creation of which he is a part; and it is 
only when he forgets his origin, or, to use a more fashionable 
phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute. It is 
not among the least of the evils of the present existing govern- 
ments in all parts of Europe, that man, considered as man, is 
thrown back to a vast distance from his Maker, and the arti- 
ficial chasm filled up with a succession of barriers, or sort of 
turnpike gates, through which he has to pass. I will quote Mr. 
Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up between man 
and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a herald, 
he says: ''We fear God — we look with awe to kings — with 
affection to parliaments — with duty to magistrates — with 
reverence to priests — and with respect to nobility." Mr, 
Burke has forgotten to put in "chivalry." He has also for- 
gotten to put in Peter. 

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, 
through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. 
It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty 
to God, which every man must feel, and with respect to his 
neighbor, to do as he would be done by. If those to whom 
power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they 
will be despised. And with regard to those to whom no power 
is delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know 
nothing of them. . . . 

The rights of men in society are neither devisable or trans- 
ferable, nor annihilable, but are descendable only; and it is not 
in the power of any generation to intercept finally, and cut off 
the descent. If the present generation, or any other, are dis- 
posed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding 
generation to be free; wrongs cannot have a legal descent. 
When Mr. Burke attempts to maintain that the "English na- 



622 THOMAS PAINE 

tion did, at the Revolution of 1688, most solemnly renounce and 
abdicate their rights for themselves, and for all their posterity- 
forever," he speaks a language that merits not reply, and which 
can only excite contempt for his prostitute principles, or pity 
for his ignorance. 

In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of 
the will and testament of some former generation, presents 
itself, it is an absurdity. A cannot make a will to take from B 
his property, and give it to C ; yet this is the manner in which 
(what is called) hereditary succession by law operates. A cer- 
tain former generation made a will to take away the rights of 
the commencing generation and all future ones, and convey 
those rights to a third person, who afterwards comes forward, 
and tells them, in Mr. Burke's language, that they have no 
rights, — that their rights are already bequeathed to him, and 
that he will govern in contempt of them. From such principles, 
and such ignorance, good Lord deliver the world ! 

But, after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, — or 
rather, what is monarchy? Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is 
it a fraud? Is it a "contrivance of human wisdom," or human 
craft, to obtain money from a nation under specious pretences? 
Is it a thing necessary to a nation? If it is, in what does that 
necessity consist? what service does it perform? what is its 
business? and what are its merits? Does the virtue consist in 
the metaphor, or in the man? Does the goldsmith that makes 
the crown, make the virtue also? Does it operate like Fortu- 
natus's wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it 
make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It appears to be 
something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and 
rejected in some countries both as unnecessary and expensive. 
In America it is considered as an absurdity, and in France it 
has so far declined that the goodness of the man, and the respect 
for his personal character, are the only things that preserve the 
appearance of its existence. 

If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, "a contriv- 
ance of human wisdom," I might ask him if wisdom was at such 
a low ebb in England, that it was become necessary to import 
it from Holland and from Hanover? But I will do the country 
the justice to say that was not the case; and even if it was, 
it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when 



THE RIGHTS OF MAN 623 

properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there 
could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for 
a Dutch stadtholder, or a German elector, than there was in 
America to have done a similar thing. If a country does not 
understand its own affairs, how is a foreigner to understand 
them, who knows neither its laws, its manners, nor its lan- 
guage? If there existed a man so transcendently wise above all 
others, that his wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation, some 
reason might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our 
eyes about a country, and observe how every part understands 
its own affairs ; and when we look around the world, and see that, 
of all men in it, the race of kings are the most insignificant in 
capacity, our reason cannot fail to ask us — What are those 
men kept for? 

If there is anything in monarchy which we people of America 
do not understand, I wish Mr. Burke would be so kind as to 
inform us. I see in America a government extending over a 
country ten times as large as England, and conducted with 
regularity for a fortieth part of the expense which government 
costs in England. If I ask a man in America if he wants a king, 
he retorts, and asks me if I take him for an idiot. How is it that 
this difference happens? Are we more or less wise than others? 
I see in America the generality of people living in a style of 
plenty unknown in monarchical countries; and I see that the 
principle of its government, which is that of the equal rights of 
man, is making a rapid progress in the world. . . . 



JAMES BOSWELL 

THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES 
WITH SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 

1786 

[The tour to the Hebrides took place in 1773, and Johnson published 
his account of it in 1775. Two years after his death, Boswell brought out 
this Journal, which was a kind of preHminary section of the Life that fol- 
lowed five years later. (The greater part of the earlier work was incor- 
porated in the later.) On the inception of the biography, see Boswell's 
remarks on page 626, below. Two other preliminary sections, the Letter 
to Chesterfield and the Conversation with George III, were pubhshed in 
1790. The success of the Life was immediate, and destined to be lasting 
beyond that of any other biography in the language. For the attitude 
toward it of Dr. Johnson's friends, see Miss Burney's Diary, page 523, 
above. The biography is not divided into chapters or sections; the pas- 
sages reprinted below may be found in the edition of Dr. Birkbeck Hill, 
vol. I, pp. 227-259, 297-309, 337-343, 452-461, 476-482; vol. n, 37-46, 

270-276, 290-294, 337-343; vol. m, 74-90; vol. IV, 40-42, 74-75, 359-371, 

490-496.] 

Saturday, 25th September. 

. . . Dr. Johnson went to bed soon. When one bovi^l of 
punch Mras finished, I rose, and was near the door, in my way 
upstairs to bed; but Corrichatachin said it was the first time 
Col had been in his house, and he should have his bowl; and 
would not I join in drinking it? The heartiness of my hon- 
est landlord, and the desire of doing social honor to our very 
obliging conductor, induced me to sit down again. Col's bowl 
was finished, and by that time we were well warmed. A third 
bowl was soon made, and that too was finished. We were cor- 
dial and merry to a high degree, but of what passed I have no 
recollection, with any accuracy. I remember calling Corricha- 
tachin by the familiar appellation of Corri, which his friends 
do. A fourth bowl was made, by which time Col and young 
Mackinnon, Corrichatachin's son, slipped away to bed. I con- 
tinued a little with Corri and Knockow, but at last I left them. 
It was near five in the morning when I got to bed. 



A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES 625 

Sunday, September 26. 

I awaked at noon, with a severe headache. I was much vexed 
that I should have been guilty of such a riot, and afraid of a re- 
proof from Dr. Johnson. I thought it very inconsistent with that 
conduct which I ought to maintain while the companion of the 
"Rambler." About one, he came into my room, and accosted 
me, "What, drunk yet?" His tone of voice was not that of se- 
vere upbraiding; so I was reHeved a Httle. " Sir," said I, "they 
kept me up." He answered, "No, you kept them up, you 
drunken dog." This he said with good-humored English pleas- 
antry. Soon afterwards, Corrichatachin, Col, and other friends 
assembled round my bed. Corri had a brandy bottle and glass 
with him, and insisted I should take a dram. "Ay," said Dr. 
Johnson, "fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we 
may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing for a fellow to get 
drunk at night, and skulk to bed, and let his friends have no 
sport." Finding him thus jocular, I became quite easy; and 
when I offered to get up, he very good-naturedly said, "You 
need be in no such hurry now." I took my host's advice, and 
drank some brandy, which I found an effectual cure for my 
headache. When I rose, I went into Dr. Johnson's room, and, 
taking up Mrs. Mackinnon's prayer-book, I opened it at the 
twentieth Sunday after Trinity, in the Epistle for which I read, 
"And be not drunk with wine, wherein there is excess." Some 
would have taken this as a divine interposition. . . . 

Monday, October 11. 

, We had some days ago engaged the Campbelltown vessel to 
carry us to Mull, from the harbor where she lay. The morning 
was fine, and the wind fair and moderate; so we hoped at length 
to get away. Mrs. Macsweyn, who officiated as our landlady 
here, had never been on the mainland. On hearing this, Dr. 
Johnson said to me, before her, "That is rather being behind- 
hand with life. I would atleast go and see Glenelg." Boswell: 
"You yourself, sir, have never seen anything but your native 
island." Johnson: "But, sir, by seeing London, I have seen as 
much of life as the world can show." Boswell: " You have not 
seen Pekin." Johnson: "What is Pekin? Ten thousand Lon- 
doners would drive all the people of Pekin; they would drive, 
them like deer." 



626 JAMES BOSWELL 

. . . The Sunday evening that we sat by ourselves at Aber- 
deen, I asked him several particulars of his life, from his early 
years, which he readily told me, and I wrote them down before 
him. This day I proceeded in my inquiries, also writing them in 
his presence. I have them on detached sheets. I shall collect 
authentic materials for The Life oj Samuel Johnson, LL.D. ; 
and, if I survive him, I shall be one who will most faithfully do 
honor to his memory. I have now a vast treasure of his conver- 
sation, at different times, since the year 1762, when I first ob- 
tained his acquaintance ; and by assiduous inquiry I can make 
up for not knowing him sooner. 

. . ; It may be objected by some persons, as it has been by 
one of my friends, that he who has the power of thus exhibit- 
ing an exact transcript of conversations is not a desirable 
member of society. I repeat the answer which I made to that 
friend: "Few, very few, need be afraid that their sayings will 
be recorded. Can it be imagined that I would take the trouble 
to gather what grows on every hedge, because I have collected 
such fruits as the Nonpareil and the Bon Chretien? ^^ 

On the other hand, how useful is such a faculty, if well ex- 
ercised! To it we owe all those interesting apothegms and 
memorabilia of the ancients, which Plutarch, Xenophon, and 
Valerius Maximus have transmitted to us. To it we owe all 
those instructive and entertaining collections which the French 
have made under the title of Ana, affixed to some celebrated 
name. To it we owe the Table Talk of Selden, the Conversa- 
tion between Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden, 
Spence's Anecdotes of Pope, and other valuable remains in our 
own language. How dehghted should we have been if thus intro- 
duced into the company of Shakespeare and Dry den, of whom 
we know scarcely anything but their admirable writings ! What 
pleasure would it have given us to have known their petty hab- 
its, their characteristic manners, their modes of composition, 
and their genuine opinion of preceding writers and of their con- 
temporaries! All these are now irrecoverably lost. Considering 
how many of the strongest and most brilliant effusions of ex- 
alted intellect must have perished, how much is it to be regret- 
ted that all men of distinguished wisdom and wit have not been 
attended by friends of taste enough to rehsh, and abilities 
enough to register, their conversation. 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 627 

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 
Multi, scd omncs illacrymabiles 
Urgentur, ignotique longa 
Node, carent quia vate sacra} 

They whose inferior exertions are recorded, as serving to 
explain or illustrate the sayings of such men, may be proud of 
being thus associated, and of their names being transmitted 
to posterity, by being appended to an illustrious character. 

Before I conclude, I think it proper to say that I have sup- 
pressed everything which I thought could really hurt any one 
now living. Vanity and self-conceit indeed may sometimes 
suffer. With respect to what is related, I considered it my duty 
to "extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in mahce"; and 
with those lighter strokes of Dr. Johnson's satire, proceeding 
from a warmth and quickness of imagination, not from any 
malevolence of heart, and which on account of their excellence 
could not be omitted, I trust that they who are the subject of 
them have good sense and good temper enough not to be dis- 
pleased. 

I have only to add that I shall ever reflect with great pleasure 
on a tour which has been the means of preserving so much of 
the enlightened and instructive conversation of one whose 
virtues will, I hope, ever be an object of imitation, and whose 
powers of mind were so extraordinary that ages may revolve 
before such a man shall again appear. 

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 
1791 

[" IRENE" AND ''tHE RAMBLER "] 

Garrick being now vested with theatrical power by being 
manager of Drury Lane Theatre, he kindly and generously 
made use of it to bring out Johnson's tragedy, which had been 
long kept back for want of encouragement. But in this bene- 
volent purpose he met with no small difficulty from the temper 
of Johnson, which could not brook that a drama which he had 
formed with much study, and had been obliged to keep more 
than the nine years of Horace, should be revised and altered at 

1 See note to page 464, above. 



628 JAMES BOSWELL 

the pleasure of an actor. Yet Garrick knew well that without 
some alterations it would not be fit for the stage. A violent 
dispute having ensued between them, Garrick applied to the 
Reverend Dr. Taylor to interpose. Johnson was at first very- 
obstinate. "Sir," said he, "the fellow wants me to make Ma- 
homet run mad, that he may have an opportunity of tossing his 
hands and kicking his heels." He was, however, at last with 
difficulty prevailed on to comply with Garrick's wishes, so as 
to allow of some changes; but still there were not enough. 

Dr. Adams was present the first night of the representation of 
Irene, and gave me the following account. "Before the curtain 
drew up, there were catcalls whistling, which alarmed Johnson's 
friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly 
strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, 
till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine 
of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was 
to speak two Hnes with the bow-string round her neck. The 
audience cried out 'Murder! Murder!' She several times at- 
tempted to speak, but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off 
the stage alive." This passage was afterwards struck out, and 
she was carried off to be put to death behind the scenes, as the 
play now has it. . . . 

Notwithstanding all the support of such performers as Gar- 
rick, Barry, Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, and every advantage 
of dress and decoration, the tragedy of Irene did not please the 
public. Mr. Garrick's zeal carried it through for nine nights, so 
that the author had his three nights' profits; and from a re- 
ceipt signed by him, now in the hands of Mr. James Dodsley, 
it appears that his friend Mr. Robert Dodsley gave him one 
hundred pounds for the copy, with his usual reservation of the 
right of one edition. 

y Irene, considered as a poem, is entitled to the praise of su- 
perior excellence. Analyzed into parts, it will furnish a rich 
store of noble sentiments, fine imagery, and beautiful language; 
but it is deficient in pathos, in that delicate power of touching 
the human feelings, which is the principal end of the drama. 
Indeed Garrick has complained to me that Johnson not only 
had not the faculty of producing the impressions of tragedy, 
but that he had not the sensibility to perceive them. His great 
friend Mr. Walmsley's prediction, that he would "turn out a 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 629 

fine tragedy- writer," was therefore ill founded. Johnson was 
wise enough to be convinced that he had not the talents neces- 
sary to write successfully for the stage, and never made another 
attempt in that species of composition. 

When asked how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy, 
he rephed, "Like the Monument"; meaning that he continued 
firm and unmoved as that column. And let it be remembered, 
as an admonition to the genus irritahile of dramatic writers, 
that this great man, instead of peevishly complaining of the 
bad taste of the town, submitted to its decision without a mur- 
mur. He had, indeed, upon all occasions, a great deference for 
the general opinion. "A man," said he, **who writes a book, 
thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he 
supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the public to 
whom he appeals must, after all, be the judges of his preten- 
sions." . . . 

. In 1750 he came forth in the character for which he was 
eminently quahfied, a majestic teacher of moral and rehgious 
wisdom. The vehicle which he chose was that of a periodical 
paper, which he knew had been upon former occasions em- 
ployed with great success. The Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian 
were the last of the kind published in England, which had stood 
the test of a long trial; and such an interval had now elapsed 
since their publication as made him justly think that, to many 
of his readers, this form of instruction would in some degree 
have the advantage of novelty. A few days before the first of 
his Essays came out, there started another competitor for fame 
in the same form, under the title of The Tatler Revived, which 
I believe was " born but to die." Johnson was, I think, not very 
happy in the choice of his title. The Rambler, which certainly 
is not suited to a series of grave and moral discourses, which the 
Italians have literally, but ludicrously, translated by // Vaga- 
bondo, and which had been lately assumed as the denomination 
of a vehicle of licentious tales, The Rambler's Magazine. He 
gave Sir Joshua Reynolds the following account of its getting 
this name. ''What ww5/ be done, sir, w/// be done. When I was 
to begin publishing that paper, I was at a loss how to name it. 
I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would 
not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed 
the best that occurred, and I took it." 



630 JAMES BOSWELL 

With what devout and conscientious sentiments this paper 
was undertaken, is evidenced by the following prayer, which he 
composed and offered up on the occasion : — 

"Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all 
labor is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly, grant, I 
beseech Thee, that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be with- 
held from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of my- 
self and others; grant this, O Lord, for the sake of. thy Son, Jesus Christ. 
Amen." 

The first paper of the Rambler Y^d^z pubHshed on Tuesday the 
20th of March, 1749-50; and its author was enabled to continue 
it, without interruption, every Tuesday and Saturday, till 
Saturday, the 17th of March, 1752, on which day it closed. 
This is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, 
which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere, that "a man 
may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it"; 
for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depres- 
sion of spirits, and his labor in carrying on his Dictionary, he 
answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the 
stores of his mind, during all that time; having received no 
assistance, except four billets in No. 10, by Miss Mulso, now 
Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Mrs. Catherine Talbot; No. 97, by 
Mr. Samuel Richardson, whom he describes in an introductory 
note as "an author who has enlarged the knowledge of hu- 
man nature, and taught the passions to move at the com- 
mand of virtue"; and Numbers 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth 
Carter. 

Posterity will be astonished when they are told, upon the 
authority of Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, 
which we should suppose had been labored with all the slow at- 
tention of literary leisure, were written in haste as the moment 
pressed, without even being read over by him before they were 
printed. It can be accounted for only in this way: that by 
reading and meditation, and a very close inspection of hfe, he 
had accumulated a great fund of miscellaneous knowledge, 
which, by a peculiar promptitude of mind, was ever ready at 
his call, and which he had constantly accustomed himself to 
clothe in the most apt and energetic expression. Sir Joshua 
Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his 
extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him that 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 631 

he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every 
occasion, and in every company, to impart whatever he knew 
in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by 
constant practice, and never sufifering any careless expressions 
to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without 
arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to 
him, . . . 

As the Rambler was entirely the work of one man, there was, 
of course, such a uniformity in its texture as very much to ex- 
clude the charm of variety; and the grave and often solemn 
cast of thinking, which distinguished it from other periodical 
papers, made it for some time not generally liked. So slowly 
did this excellent work, of which twelve editions have now 
issued from the press, gain upon the world at large, that even 
in the closing number the author says, " I have never been much 
a favorite of the public." 

Yet, very soon after its commencement, there were who felt 
and acknowledged its uncommon excellence. Verses in its 
praise appeared in the newspapers; and the editor of the Gen- 
tlemait's Magazine mentions, in October, his having received 
several letters to the same purpose from the learned. The Stu- 
dent, or Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany, in which Mr. Bonnell 
Thornton and Mr. Colman were the principal writers, describes 
it as "a work that exceeds anything of the kind ever published 
in this kingdom, some of the 'Spectators' excepted — if, indeed 
they may be excepted." And afterwards, "May the public 
favors crown his merits, and may not the English, under the 
auspicious reign of George the Second, neglect a man who, had 
he lived in the first century, would have been one of the greatest 
favorites of Augustus." This flattery of the monarch had no 
effect. It is too well known that the second George never was 
an Augustus to learning or genius. 

Johnson told me, with an amiable fondness, a little pleasing 
circumstance relative to this work. Mrs. Johnson, in whose 
judgment and taste he had great confidence, said to him, after 
a few numbers of the Rambler had come out, "I thought very 
well of you before; but I did not imagine you could have writ- 
ten anything equal to this." Distant praise, from whatever 
quarter, is not so delightful as that of a wife whom a man loves 
and esteems. Her approbation may be said to "come home to 



632 JAMES BOSWELL 

his bosom," and being so near, its effect is most sensible and 
permanent. . . . 

To point out the numerous subjects which the Rambler 
treats, with a dignity and perspicuity which are there united 
in a manner which we shall in vain look for anywhere else, 
would take up too large a portion of my book, and would, I 
trust, be superfluous, considering how universally those vol- 
umes are now disseminated. Even the most condensed and 
brilHant sentences which they contain, and which have very 
properly been selected under the name of Beauties, are of con- 
siderable bulk. But I may shortly observe that the Rambler 
furnishes such an assemblage of discourses on practical religion 
and moral duty, of critical investigations, and allegorical and 
Oriental tales, that no mind can be thought very deficient that 
has, by constant study and meditation, assimilated to itself all 
that may be found there. . . . Though instruction be the pre- 
dominant purpose of the Rambler, yet it is enlivened with a 
considerable portion of amusement. Nothing can be more 
erroneous than the notion which some persons have entertained, 
that Johnson was then a retired author, ignorant of the world, 
and, of consequence, that he wrote only from his imagination, 
when he described characters and manners. He said to me that 
before he wrote that work he had been "running about the 
world," as he expressed it, more than almost anybody; and I 
have heard him relate with much satisfaction that several of 
the characters in the Rambler were drawn so naturally that, 
when it first circulated in numbers, a club in one of the towns 
of Essex imagined themselves to be severely exhibited in it, and 
were much incensed against a person who, they suspected, had 
thus made them objects of public notice; nor were they quieted 
till authentic assurance was given them that the Rambler was 
written by 3, person who had never heard of any one of them. 
Some of the characters are believed to have been actually drawn 
from the life, particularly that of Prospero from Garrick, who 
never entirely forgave its pointed satire. . . . 

The style of this work has been censured by some shallow 
critics as involved and turgid, and abounding with antiquated 
and hard words. So ill-founded is the first part of this objec- 
tion, that I will challenge all who may honor this book with 
a perusal, to point out any English writer whose language con- 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 633 

veys his meaning with equal force and perspicuity. It must, 
indeed, be allowed that the structure of his sentences is ex- 
panded, and often has somewhat the inversion of the Latin, 
and that he delighted to express familiar thoughts in philo- 
sophical language, being in this the reverse of Socrates, who, it 
was said, reduced philosophy to the simplicity of common life. 
But let us attend to what he him.self says in his concluding 
paper: "When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or 
less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the terms 
of philosophy by applying them to popular ideas." And as to 
the second part of this objection, upon a late careful revision 
of the work I can with confidence say that it is amazing how 
few of those words, for which it has been unjustly characterized, 
are actually to be found in it; I am sure, not the proportion of 
one to each paper. This idle charge has been echoed from one 
babbler to another, who have confounded Johnson's Essays 
with Johnson's Dictionary, and, because he thought it right 
in a lexicon of our language to collect many words which had 
fallen into disuse, but were supported by great authorities, it 
has been imagined that all of these have been interwoven into 
his own compositions. That some of them have been adopted 
by him unnecessarily, may perhaps be allowed; but in general 
they are evidently an advantage, for without them his stately 
ideas would be confined and cramped. "He that thinks with 
more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning." 
He once told me that he had formed his style upon that of Sir 
William Temple and upon Chambers's Proposal for his Diction- 
ary. He certainly was mistaken; or if he imagined at first that 
he was imitating Temple, he was very unsuccessful, for nothing 
can be more unhke than the simplicity of Temple and the richness 
of Johnson. Their styles differ as plain cloth and brocade. . . . 
Johnson's language, however, must be allowed to be too mas- 
culine for the delicate gentleness of female writing. His ladies, 
therefore, seem strangely formal, even to ridicule, and are well 
denominated by the names which he has given them, — as 
Misella, Zozima, Properantia, Rhodoclia. 

[dr. JOHNSON AND LORD CHESTERFIELD] 

Lord Chesterfield, to whom Johnson had paid the high com- 
pliment of addressing to his Lordship the Plan of his Diction- 



634 JAMES BOSWELL 

ary, had behaved to him in such a manner as to excite his con- 
tempt and indignation. The world has for many years been 
amused with a story, confidently told and as confidently re- 
peated with additional circumstances, that a sudden disgust 
was taken by Johnson upon occasion of his having been one day 
kept long in waiting in his lordship's antechamber, for which 
the reason assigned was that he had company with him; and 
that at last, when the door opened, out walked Colley Gibber; 
and that Johnson was so violently provoked when he found for 
whom he had been so long excluded that he went away in a 
passion, and never would return. I remember having men- 
tioned this story to George Lord Lyttelton, who told me he was 
very intimate with Lord Ghesterfield, and, holding it as a well- 
known truth, defended Lord Ghesterfield by saying that Gibber, 
who had been introduced familiarly by the back stairs, had 
probably not been there above ten minutes. It may seem 
strange even to entertain a doubt concerning a story so long 
and so widely current, and thus implicitly adopted, if not sanc- 
tioned, by the authority which I have mentioned; but Johnson 
himself assured me that there was not the least foundation for 
it. He told me that there never was any particular incident 
which produced a quarrel between Lord Ghesterfield and him, 
but that his lordship's continued neglect was the reason why 
he resolved to have no connection with him. 

When the Dictionary was upon the eve of publication, Lord 
Ghesterfield, who, it is said, had flattered himself with expecta- 
tions that Johnson would dedicate the work to him, attempted, 
in a courtly manner, to soothe and insinuate himself with the 
sage, — conscious, as it should seem, of the cold indifference 
with which he had treated its learned author; and further at- 
tempted to concihate him by writing two papers in The World 
in recommendation of the work; and it must be confessed that 
they contain some studied compliments, so finely turned that, 
if there had been no previous offense, it is probable that John- 
son would have been highly delighted. Praise, in general, was 
pleasing to him; but by praise from a man of rank and elegant 
accomplishments he was peculiarly gratified. ... 

This courtly device failed of its effect. Johnson, who thought 
that "all was false and hollow," despised the honeyed words, 
and was even indignant that Lord Ghesterfield should for a 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 635' 

moment imagine that he could be the dupe of such an artifice. 
His expression to me concerning Lord Chesterfield, upon this 
occasion, was, "Sir, after making great professions, he had 
for many years taken no notice of me; but when my Dictionary 
was coming out, he fell a-scribbling in The World about it. 
Upon which I wrote him a letter expressed in civil terms, but 
such as might show him that I did not mind what he said or 
wrote, and that I had done with him." 

This is that celebrated letter of which so much has been said, 
and about which curiosity has been so long excited without 
being gratified. I for many years solicited Johnson to favor me 
with a copy of it, that so excellent a composition might not be 
lost to posterity. He delayed from time to time to give it to me; 
till at last, in 1781, when we were on a visit at Mr. Dilly's, at 
Southill in Bedfordshire, he was pleased to dictate it to me 
from memory. He afterwards found among his papers a copy 
of it, which he had dictated to Mr. Baretti, with its title and 
corrections in his own handwriting. This he gave to Mr. Lang- 
ton, adding that if it were to come into print, he wished it to be 
from that copy. By Mr. Langton's kindness I am enabled to 
enrich my work with a perfect transcript of what the world has 
so eagerly desired to see. 

February 7, 1775. 
To THE Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield. 
My Lord, 

I have been lately informed by the proprietor of The World that two 
papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were writ- 
ten by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which, being 
very Httle accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to 
receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. 

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, 
I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your 
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself le vain- 
queur dii vainqueiir de la terre; — that I might obtain that regard for 
which I saw the world contending. But I found my attendance so little 
encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue 
it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted 
all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. 
I had done all that I could ; and no man is well pleased to have his all 
neglected, be it ever so little. 

Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward 
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been 
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, 



636 JAMES BOSWELL 

and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of 
assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treat- 
ment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. 

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found 
him a native of the rocks. 

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
strugghng for Ufe in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encum- 
bers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of 
my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I 
am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot im- 
part it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical 
asperity not to confess obhgations where no benefit has been received, or 
to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron 
which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any 
favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall conclude it, 
if less be possible, with less; for I have long wakened from that dream of 
hope in which I once boasted myself, with so much exultation. 
My Lord, your lordship's most humble, 

Most obedient servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

... There is a curious minute circumstance which struck 
me, in comparing the various editions of Johnson's Imitations 
of Juvenal. In the tenth Satire, one of the couplets upon the 
vanity of wishes even for Kterary distinction stood thus: — 

Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail, 
Pride, ^ envy, want, the garret, and the jail. 

But after experiencing the uneasiness which Lord Chester- 
field's fallacious patronage made him feel, he dismissed the 
word garret from the sad group, and in all subseqiient editions 
the line stands : — 

Pride, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. 

That Lord Chesterfield must have been mortified by the lofty 
contempt, and polite yet keen satire, with which Johnson ex- 
hibited him to himself in this letter, it is impossible to doubt. 
He, however, with that glossy duplicity which was his constant 
study, affected to be quite unconcerned. Dr. Adams mentioned 
to Mr. Robert Dodsley that he was sorry Johnson had written 
his letter to Lord Chesterfield. Dodsley, with the true feelings 
of trade, said "he was very sorry too ; for that he had a property 
in the Dictionary, to which his lordship's patronage might have 

» "Pride " is misquoted for toil. 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 637 

been of consequence." He then told Dr. Adams that Lord 
Chesterfield had shown him the letter. "I should have im- 
agined," replied Dr. Adams, ''that Lord Chesterfield would 
have concealed it." "Poh!" said Dodsley, "do you think a 
letter from Johnson could hurt Lord Chesterfield? Not at all, 
sir. It lay upon his table, where anybody might see it. He 
read it to me; said, 'This man has great powers,' pointed out 
the severest passages, and observed how well they were ex- 
pressed." This air of indifference, which imposed upon the 
worthy Dodsley, was certainly nothing but a specimen of that 
dissimulation which Lord Chesterfield inculcated as one of the 
most essential lessons for the conduct of life. His lordship 
endeavored to justify himself to Dodsley from the charges 
brought against him by Johnson ; but we may judge of the flim- 
siness of his defense, from his having excused his neglect of 
Johnson by saying that "he had heard he had changed his lodg- 
ings, and did not know where he lived"; as if there could have 
been the smallest difficulty to inform himself of that circum- 
stance, by inquiring in the literary circle with which his lord- 
ship was well acquainted, and was indeed himself one of its 
ornaments. 

Dr. Adams expostulated with Johnson, and suggested that 
his not being admitted when he called on him was probably not 
to be imputed to Lord Chesterfield; for his lordship had de- 
clared to Dodsley that "he would have turned ofif the best serv- 
ant he ever had, if he had known that he denied him to a man 
who would have been always more than welcome"; and in 
confirmation of this he insisted on Lord Chesterfield's general 
affability and easiness of access, especially to literary men. 
"Sir," said Johnson, "that is not Lord Chesterfield; he is the 
proudest man this day existing." "No," said Dr. Adams, 
"there is one person, at least, as proud; I think, by your own 
account, you are the prouder man of the two." "But mine," 
replied Johnson instantly, "was defensive pride." This, as Dr. 
Adams well observed, was one of those happy turns for which 
he was so remarkably ready. 

Johnson, having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord 
Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning 
that nobleman with a pointed freedom. "This man," said he, 
"I thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only 



638 JAMES BOSWELL 

a wit among lords!" And when his Letters to his natural son 
were pubhshed, he observed that "they teach the morals of a 
whore, and the manners of a dancing-master." 

[the dictionary] 

The Dictionary, with a Grammar and History of the English 
Language, being now at length published, in two volumes foHo, 
the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work 
achieved by one man, while other countries had thought such 
undertakings fit only for whole academies. Vast as his powers 
were, I cannot but think that his imagination deceived him, 
when he supposed that by constant application he might have 
performed the task in three years. Let the Preface be atten- 
tively perused, in which is given, in a clear, strong, glowing 
style, a comprehensive yet particular view of what he had done, 
and it will be evident that the time he employed upon it was 
comparatively short. I am unwilling to swell my book with long 
quotations from what is in everybody's hands, and I believe 
there are few prose compositions in the English language that 
are read with more delight, or are more impressed upon the 
memory, than that preliminary discourse. . . . The extensive 
reading which was absolutely necessary for the accumulation 
of authorities, and which alone may account for Johnson's 
retentive mind being enriched with a very large and various 
store of knowledge and imagery, must have occupied several 
years. The Preface furnishes an eminent instance of a double 
talent, of which Johnson was dully conscious. Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds heard him say,f^here are two things which I am con- 
fident I can do very -vml : one is an introduction to any literary 
work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be exe- 
cuted in the most perfect manner; the other is a conclusion, 
showing from various causes why the execution has not been 
equal to what the author promised to himself and to the public." 

How should puny scribblers be abashed and disappointed, 
when they find him displaying a perfect theory of lexicograph- 
ical excellence, yet at the same time candidly and modestly 
allowing that he "had not satisfied his own expectations." 
Here was a fair occasion for the exercise of Johnson's modesty, 
when he was called upon to compare his own arduous perform- 
ance, not with those of other individuals (in which case his 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 639 

inflexible regard to truth would have been violated had he 
affected diffidence), but with speculative perfection; as he who 
can outstrip all his competitors in the race may yet be sensible 
of his deficiency when he runs against time. Well might he say 
that "the English Dictionary was written with httle assistance 
of the learned"; for he told me that the only aid which he re- 
ceived was a paper containing twenty etymologies, sent to him 
by a person then unknown, who he was afterwards informed 
was Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester. The etymologies, though 
they exhibit learning and judgment, are not, I think, entitled 
to the first praise among the various parts of this immense 
work. The definitions have always appeared to me such aston- 
ishing proofs of acuteness of intellect and precision of language, 
as indicate a genius of the highest rank. This it is which marks 
the superior excellence of Johnson's Dictionary over others 
equally or even more voluminous, and must have made it a 
work of much greater mental labor than mere Lexicons, or 
Word-Books, as the Dutch call them. They who will make the 
experiment of trying how they can define a few words of what- 
ever nature, will soon be satisfied of the unquestionable justice 
of this observation, which I can assure my readers is founded 
upon much study, and upon communication with more minds 
than my own. 

A few of his definitions must be admitted to be erroneous. 
Thus Windward and Leeward, though directly of opposite 
meaning, are defined identically the same way; as to which 
inconsiderable specks it is enough to observe that his Preface 
announced that he was aware there might be many such in so 
immense a work; nor was he at all disconcerted when an instance 
was pointed out to him. A lady once asked him how he came to 
define Pastern the knee oi a. horse; instead of making an elabor- 
ate defense, as she expected, he at once answered, /'^Ignorance, 
Madam, — pure ignorance." His definition of Network^ has 
been often quoted with sportive malignity, as obscuring a thing 
in itself very plain. But to these frivolous censures no other 
answer is necessary than that which we are furnished by his 
own Preface: "To explain, requires the use of terms less ab- 
struse than that which is to be explained, and such terms can- 
not always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by 

» " Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the 
intersections." 



640 JAMES BOSWELL 

supposing something intuitively known, and evident without 
proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too 
plain to admit of definition. Sometimes easier words are 
changed into harder; as, burial into sepulture or interment ; dry 
into dessicative ; dryness into siccity or aridity ; jit into paroxysm ; 
for the easiest word, whatever it is, can never be translated into 
one more easy." 

His introducing his own opinions, and even prejudices, under 
general definitions of words, while at the same time the original 
meaning of the words is not explained, as his Tory, Whig, Pen- 
sion, Oats, Excise,'^ and a few more, cannot be fully defended, 
and must be placed to the account of capricious and humorous 
indulgence. Talking to me upon this subject when we were at 
Ashbourne in 1777, he mentioned a still stronger instance of the 
predominance of his private feelings in the composition of this 
work than any now to be found in it. "You know, sir. Lord 
Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest. When I came to the 
word renegado, after telling that it meant 'one who deserts to 
the enemy, a revolter,' I added, 'Sometimes we say a Gower. ^ 
Thus it went to the press; but the printer had more wit than I, 
and struck it out." 

Let it, however, be remembered that this indulgence does 
not display itself only in sarcasm against others, but sometimes 
in playful allusion to the notions commonly entertained of his 
own laborious task. Thus: "Grub-street, the name of a street in 
London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, diction- 
aries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is 
called Grub-street." — "Lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, 
a harmless drudge." 

[boswell's first meeting with dr. Johnson] 
Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor, who then kept a bookseller's 
shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson 

1 These definitions were: — 

" Tory. One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical 
hierarchy of the Church of England." 

"Whig. The name of a faction." 

"Pension. An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is 
generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country." 

"Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports 
the people." 

"Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common 
judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 641 

was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, 
where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some 
unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to 
us. . . . 

At last, on Monday, the i6th of May,^ when I was sitting in 
Mr. Davies's back parlor, after having drunk tea with him and 
Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and 
Mr. Davies having perceived him, through the glass door in the 
room in which we were sitting, advancing toward us, he an- 
nounced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner 
of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on 
the appearance of his father's ghost: ''Look, my lord, it comes!" 
I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from 
the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after 
he had published his Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in 
his easy chair in deep meditation; which was the first picture 
his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented 
to me, and from which an engraving has been made for this 
work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully intro- 
duced me to him. I was much agitated, and, recollecting his 
prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said 
to Davies, " Don't tell where I come from." " From Scotland," 
cried Davies, roguishly. ''Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed 
come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to 
flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe 
and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at 
the expense of my country. But however that might be, this 
speech was somewhat unlucky ; for, with that quickness of wit 
for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression, " come 
from Scotland," which I used in the sense of being of that 
country, and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or 
left it, retorted, "That, sir, is what a very great many of your 
countrymen cannot help." This stroke stunned me a good deal, 
and when we had sat down I felt myself not a little embar- 
rassed, and apprehensive of what might come next. He then 
addressed himself to Davies: "What do you think of Garrick? 
He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, be- 
cause he knows the house will be full and that an order would 
be worth three shillings." Eager to take any opening to get 

» 1763. 



642 JAMES BOSWELL 

into conversation with him, I ventured to say, "0, sir, I cannot 
think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you." "Sir," 
said he, with a stern look, " I have known David Garrick longer 
than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to 
me on the subject." Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was 
rather presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any 
doubt of the justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaint- 
ance and pupil. I now felt myself much mortified, and began 
to think that the hope which I had long indulged of obtaining 
his acquaintance was blasted. And in truth, had not my ardor 
been uncommonly strong, and my resolution uncommonly 
persevering, so rough a reception might have deterred me from 
ever making any further attempts. Fortunately, however, I 
remained upon the field not wholly discomfited, and was soon 
rewarded by hearing some of his conversation, of which I pre- 
served the following short minute, without marking the ques- 
tions and observations by which it was produced. 

"People," he remarked, "may be taken in once, who imagine 
that an author is greater in private life than other men. Uncom- 
mon parts require uncommon opportunities for their exertion. 

"In barbarous society, superiority of parts is of real conse- 
quence. Great strength or great wisdom is of much value to an 
individual. But in more polished times there are people to do 
everything for money, and then there are a number of other 
superiorities, such as those of birth, and fortune, and rank, 
that dissipate men's attention, and leave no extraordinary 
share of respect for personal and intellectual superiority. This 
is wisely ordered by Providence, to preserve some equality 
among mankind." . . . 

I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigor of his 
conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it 
by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the 
evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make 
an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; 
so that I was satisfied that, though there was a roughness in 
his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies 
followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little 
of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly 
took upon him to console me by saying, "Don't be uneasy. I 
can see he likes you very well." 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 643 

A few days afterwards I called on Davies, and asked him if he 
thought I might take the liberty of waiting on Mr. Johnson at 
his chambers in the Temple. He said I certainly might, and 
that Mr. Johnson would take it as a compliment. So upon 
Tuesday, the 24th of May, after having been enlivened by the 
witty sallies of Messieurs Thornton, Wilkes, Churchill, and 
Lloyd, with whom I had passed the morning, I boldly repaired 
to Johnson. His chambers were on the first floor of No. i, 
Inner Temple Lane, and I entered them with an impression 
given me by the Reverend Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, who had 
been introduced to him not long before, and described his having 
"found the Giant in his den"; an expression which, when I 
came to be pretty well acquainted with Johnson, I repeated to 
him, and he was diverted at this picturesque account of him- 
self. Dr. Blair had been presented to him by Dr. James For- 
dyce. At this time the controversy concerning the pieces pub- 
hshed by Mr. James Macpherson, as translations of Ossian, 
was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authen- 
ticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, 
maintained that they had no merit. The subject having been 
introduced by Dr. Fordyce, Dr. Blair, relying on the internal 
evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he 
thought any man of a modern age could have written such 
poems. Johnson replied, ''Yes, sir, many men, many women, 
and many children." Johnson, at this time, did not know that 
Dr. Blair had just published a Dissertation, not only defending 
their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems 
of Homer and Virgil ; and when he was afterwards informed of 
this circumstance, he expressed some displeasure at Dr. For- 
dyce's having suggested the topic, and said, "I am not sorry 
that they got thus much for their pains. Sir, it was like leading 
one to talk of a book when the author is concealed behind the 
door." 

He received me very courteously; but it must be confessed 
that his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were 
sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very 
rusty; he had on a httle old, shriveled, unpowdered wig, which 
was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his 
breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; 
and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But 



644 JAMES BOSWELL 

all these slovenly particulars were forgotten the moment that 
he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, 
were sitting with him, and when they went away, I also rose; 
but he said to me, "Nay^ don/t_go." "Sir," said I, "I am afraid 
that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit and 
hear you." He seemed pleased with this compliment, which I 
sincerely paid him, and answered, "Sir, I am obliged to any 
man who visits me." I have preserved the following short 
minute of what passed this day. 

"Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary 
deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend 
Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his 
knees and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other un- 
usual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater 
madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am 
afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their under- 
standing is not called in question." 

Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, who 
was confined in a madhouse, he had, at another time, the fol- 
lowing conversation with Dr. Burney. Burney: "How does 
poor Smart do, sir? Is he Hkely to recover?" Johnson: " It 
, seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease, for 
) he grows fat upon it." Burney: "Perhaps, sir, that may be 
from want of exercise." Johnson: "No, sir; he has partly as 
much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. 
Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to 
the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think 
he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to 
society. He insisted on people praying with him, and I 'd as Hef 
pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was that 
he did not love clean linen, and I have no passion for it." 

Johnson continued: "Mankind have a great aversion to in- 
\tellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily at- 
tainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than 
would take even a little trouble to acquire it." 

"The morality of an action depends on the motive from 
which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention 
to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, 
the physical effect is good ; but, with respect to me, the action 
is very wrong. So religious exercises, if not performed with an 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 645 

intention to please God, avail us nothing. As our Saviour says 
of those who perform them from other motives, ' Verily they 
have their reward.'" . . . 

Talking of Garrick, he said, "He is the first man in the world 
for sprightly conversation." 

When I rose a second time, he again pressed me to stay, 
which I did. 

He told me that he generally went abroad at four in the after- 
noon, and seldom came home till two in the morning. I took 
the liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and 
not make more use of his great talents. He owned it was a bad 
habit. On reviewing, at the distance of many years, my jour- 
nal of this period, I wonder how, at my first visit, I ventured 
to talk to him so freely, and that he bore it with so much in- 
dulgence. 

Before we parted, he was so good as to promise to favor me 
with his company one evening at my lodgings, and, as I took 
my leave, shook me cordially by the hand. It is almost need- 
less to add that I felt no little elation at having now so happily 
estabHshed an acquaintance of which I had been so long am- 
bitious. 

My readers will, I trust, excuse me for being thus minutely 
circumstantial, when it is considered that the acquaintance of 
Dr. Johnson was to me a most valuable acquisition, and laid 
the foundation of whatever instruction and entertainment 
they may receive from my collections concerning the great 
subject of the work which they are now perusing. 

[goldsmith] 

As Dr. Oliver Goldsmith will frequently appear in this nar- 
rative, I shall endeavor to make my readers in some degree ac- 
quainted with his singular character. He was a native of Ire- 
land, and a contemporary with Mr. Burke at Trinity College, 
Dublin, but did not then give much promise of future celebrity. 
He, however, observed to Mr. Malone, that "though he made 
no great figure in mathematics, which was a study in much re- 
pute there, he could turn an Ode of Horace into English better 
than any of them. He afterwards studied physic in Edin- 
burgh, and upon the Continent; and, I have been informed, was 
enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding, 



646 JAMES BOSWELL 

at Universities, to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, 
according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the 
premium of a crown, when, luckily for him, his challenge was 
not accepted; so that, as I once observed to Johnson, he dis- 
puted his passage through Europe. He then came to England, 
and was employed successively in the capacities of usher to an 
academy, a corrector of the press, a reviewer, and a writer for 
a newspaper. He had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously 
the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually 
enlarged by the contemplation of such a model. To me and 
many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner 
of Johnson, though indeed upon a smaller scale. 

At this time I think he had pubhshed nothing with his name, 
though it was pretty generally known that "one Dr. Goldsmith" 
was the author oi An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite 
Learning in Europe, and of The Citizen of the World, a series of 
letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese. No 
man had the art of displaying with more advantage, as a writer, 
whatever literary acquisitions he made. Nihil quod tetigit non 
ornavit} 

His mind resembled a fertile but thin soil. There was a quick, 
but not a strong, vegetation of whatever chanced to be thrown 
upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest 
did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant 
parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally cir- 
culated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation, 
but in truth this has been greatly exaggerated. He had, no 
doubt, a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which 
we often find in his countrymen, and which sometimes pro- 
duces a laughable confusion in expressing them. He was very 
much what the French call un etourdi, and from vanity, and an 
eager desire of being conspicuous wherever he was, he frequently 
talked carelessly, without knowledge of the subject or even with- 
out thought. His person was short, his countenance coarse and 
vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting 
the easy gentleman. Those who were in any way distinguished 
excited envy in him to so ridiculous an excess, that the in- 
stances of it are hardly credible. When accompanying two 
beautiful young ladies, with their mother, on a tour in France, 

1 "Whatever he touched he adorned." From Johnson's epitaph on Goldsmith. 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 647 

he was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them 
than to him; and once, at the exhibition of the Fantoccini^ in 
London, when those who sat next him observed with what 
dexterity a puppet was made to toss a pike, he could not bear 
that it should have such praise, and exclaimed with some 
warmth, "Pshaw! I can do it better myself." 

He, I am afraid, had no settled system of any sort, so that his 
conduct must not be strictly scrutinized; but his affections were 
social and generous, and when he had money he gave it away 
very liberally. His desire of imaginary consequence predom- 
inated over his attention to truth. When he began to rise into 
notice, he said he had a brother who was Dean of Durham, a 
fiction so easily detected that it is wonderful how he should have 
been so inconsiderate as to hazard it. He boasted to me at this 
time of the power of his pen in commanding money, which I 
believe was true in a certain degree, though in the instance he 
gave he was by no means correct. He told me that he had sold 
a novel for four hundred pounds. This was his Vicar of Wake- 
field. But Johnson informed me that he had made the bargain 
for Goldsmith, and the price was sixty pounds. ''And, sir," 
said he, "a sufficient price, too, when it was sold; for then the 
fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, 
by his Traveler; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of profit 
by his bargain that he kept the manuscript by him a long time, 
and did not publish it till after the Traveler had appeared. 
Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money." 

Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins have strangely misstated 
the history of Goldsmith's situation and Johnson's friendly 
interference, when this novel was sold, I shall give it authen- 
tically from Johnson's own exact narration: "I received one 
morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great 
distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging 
that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him ^ 
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly 
went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had 
arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. 
I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had 
got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork 
into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to 

» Puppets. 



648 JAMES BOSWELL 

him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then 
told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he pro- 
duced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the land- 
lady I should return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it 
for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he dis- 
charged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone 
for having used him so ill." 

[dr. JOHNSON AND GEORGE III] 

In February, 1767, there happened one of the most remark- 
able incidents of Johnson's life, which gratified his monarchical 
enthusiasm, and which he loved to relate, with all its circum- 
stances, when requested by his friends. This was his being hon- 
ored by a private conversation with his Majesty, in the library 
at the Queen's house. He had frequently visited those splendid 
rooms and noble collection of books, which he used to say was 
more numerous and curious than he supposed any person could 
have made in the time which the king had employed. Mr. Bar- 
nard, the librarian, took care that he should have every accom- 
modation that could contribute to his ease and convenience, 
while indulging his Hterary taste in that place, so that he had 
here a very agreeable resource at leisure hours. 

His Majesty, having been informed of his occasional visits, 
was pleased to signify a desire that he should be told when Dr. 
Johnson next came to the library. Accordingly, the next time 
that Johnson did come, as soon as he was fairly engaged with a 
book, on which, while he sat by the fire, he seemed quite intent, 
Mr. Barnard stole round to the apartment where the king was, 
and, in obedience to his Majesty's commands, mentioned that 
Dr. Johnson was then in the library. His Majesty said he was 
at leisure, and would go to him; upon which Mr. Barnard took 
one of the candles that stood on the king's table, and lighted 
his Majesty through a suite of rooms, till they came to a private 
door into the library, of which his Majesty had the key. Being 
entered, Mr. Barnard stepped forward hastily to Dr. Johnson, 
who was still in a profound study, and whispered him, "Sir, 
here is the King." Johnson started up, and stood still. His 
Majesty approached him, and at once was courteously easy. 

His Majesty began by observing that he understood he 
came sometimes to the hbrary, and then, mentioning his having 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 649 

heard that the Doctor had been lately at Oxford, asked him if he 
was not fond of going thither. To which Johnson answered that 
he was indeed fond of going to Oxford sometimes, but was hke- 
wise glad to come back again. The king then asked him what 
they were doing at Oxford. Johnson answered, he could not much 
commend their diligence, but that in some respects they were 
mended, for they had put their press under better regulations, 
and were at that time printing Polybius. He was then asked 
whether there were better hbraries at Oxford or Cambridge. He 
answered, he believed the Bodleian was larger than any they 
had at Cambridge, at the same time adding, "I hope, whether 
we have more books or not than they have at Cambridge, 
we shall make as good use of them as they do." Being asked 
whether All Souls or Christ Church library was the largest, 
he answered, "All Souls library is the largest we have, except 
the Bodleian." " Ay," said the king, " that is the pubhc library." 
i^His Majesty inquired if he was then writing anything. He 
answered he was not, for he had pretty well told the world what 
he knew, and must now read to acquire more knowledge?] The 
king, as it should seem with a view to urge him to rely on his 
own stores as an original writer, and to continue his labors, 
then said, "I do not think you borrow much from anybody." 
Johnson said he thought he had already done his part as a 
writer. "I should have thought so too," said the king, "if you 
had not written so well." Johnson observed to me, upon this, 
that "no man could have paid a handsomer comphment, and 
it was fit for a king to pay. It was decisive." When asked by 
another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made 
any reply to this high compliment, he answered, "No, sir. 
When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me 
to bandy civiHties with my sovereign." Perhaps no man who 
had spent his whole life in courts could have shown a more nice 
and dignified sense of true politeness than Johnson did in this 
instance. . . , 

The king then talked of literary journals, mentioned particu- 
larly the Journal des Savans, and asked Johnson if it was well 
done. Johnson said it was formerly very well done, and gave 
some account of the persons who began it and carried it on for 
some years, enlarging, at the same time, on the nature and use. 
of such works. The king asked him if it was well done now. 



650 JAMES BOSWELL 

Johnson answered he had no reason to think that it was. The 
king then asked him if there were any other Hterary journals 
published in this kingdom, except the Monthly and Critical Re- 
views; and on being answered there was no other, his Majesty 
asked which of them was the best. Johnson answered that the 
Monthly Review was done with most care, the Critical upon the 
best principles; adding that the authors of the Monthly Review 
were enemies to the Church. This the king said he was sorry 
to hear. 

The conversation next turned on the Philosophical Transac- 
tions, when Johnson observed that they had now a better 
frnethod of arranging their materials than formerly. "Ay," said 
the king, "they are obhged to Dr. Johnson for that"; for his 
Majesty had heard and remembered the circumstance, which 
Johnson himself had forgot. 

His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biography 
of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to 
undertake it. Johnson signified his readiness to comply with his 
Majesty's wishes. 

During the whole of this interview, Johnson talked to his 
Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm, manly 
manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone 
which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. 
After the king withdrew, Johnson showed himself highly pleased 
with his Majesty's conversation and gracious behavior. He 
said to Mr. Barnard, "Sir, they may talk of the king as they 
will; but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen." And he 
afterwards observed to Mr. Langton, "Sir, his manners are 
those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Louis the Four- 
teenth or Charles the Second." 

[the club] 

On Friday, April 30,^ I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, 
where were Lord Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some 
more members of the Literary Club, whom he had obligingly 
invited to meet me, as I was this evening to be balloted for as 
candidate for admission into that distinguished society. John- 
son had done me the honor to propose me, and Beauclerk was 

very zealous for me. 

* 1773. 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 651 

Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson: "It is amazing how 
little Goldsmith knows. He seldom comes where he is not more 
ignorant than any one else." Sir Joshua Reynolds: "Yet 
there is no man whose company is more liked." Johnson : " To 
be sure, sir. When people find a man of the most distinguished 
abihties as a writer, their inferior while he is with them, it must 
be highly gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically says 
of himself is very true, — he always gets the better when he ar- 
gues alone; meaning, that he is master of a subject in his study, 
and can write well upon it; but when he comes into company, 
grows confused and unable to talk. Take him as a poet, his 
Traveler is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his Deserted 
Village, were it not sometimes too much the echo of his Traveler. 
Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, 
or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell: "An 
historian ! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation 
of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this 
age?" Johnson: "Why, who are before him?" Boswell: 
"Hume, — Robertson, — Lord Lyttleton." Johnson (his an- 
tipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise): "I have not read 
Hume; but doubtless Goldsmith's History is better than the 
verbiage of Robertson or the foppery of Dalrymple. . . . Sir, 
he has the art of compiling, and of saying everything he has 
to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural His- 
tory, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale." . . . 

The gentlemen went away to their club, and I was left at 
Beauclerk's till the fate of my election should be announced to 
me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming con- 
versation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate. 
In a short time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was 
chosen. I hastened to the place of meeting, and was introduced 
to such a society as can seldom be found: Mr. Edmund Burke, 
whom I then saw for the first time, and whose splendid talents 
had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance; Dr. 
Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir 
William) Jones, and the company with whom I had dined. 
Upon my entrance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on 
which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous 
formality gave me a charge, pointing out the conduct expected 
from ine as a good member of this club. 



6s2^ JAMES BOSWELL 

. . . During this argument, Goldsmith sat in restless agita- 
tion, from a wish to get in and shine. Finding himself excluded, 
he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for some time 
with it in his hand, like a gamester who, at the close of a long 
night, lingers for a little while, to see if he can have a favorable 
opening to finish with success. Once when he was beginning to 
speak, he found himself overpowered by the loud voice of John- 
son, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not per- 
ceive Goldsmith's attempt. Thus disappointed of his wish to 
obtain the attention of the company, Goldsmith in a passion 
threw down his hat, looking angrily at Johnson, and exclaimed 
in a bitter tone, " Take it.^' When Toplady was going to speak, 
Johnson uttered some sound which led Goldsmith to think 
he was beginning again and taking the words from Toplady. 
Upon which, he seized this opportunity of venting his own envy 
and spleen, under the pretext of supporting another person. 
"Sir," said he to Johnson, "the gentleman has heard you pa- 
^ tiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him." Johnson 
^S^V^sternly) : "Sir, I was not interrupting the gentleman. I was 
only giving him a signal of my intention. Sir, you are impertin- 
ent." Goldsmith made no reply, but continued in the com- 
pany for some time. . . . 

[Johnson] and Mr. Langton and I went together to the Club, 
where we found Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, and some other mem- 
bers, and amongst them our friend Goldsmith, who sat silently 
brooding over Johnson's reprimand to him after dinner. John- 
son perceived this, and said aside to some of us, " I '11 make Gold- 
smith forgive me"; and then called to him in a loud voice, "Dr. 
Goldsmith, something passed to-day where you and I dined ; 
I ask your pardon." Goldsmith answered placidly, "It must be 
much from you, sir, that I take ill." And so at once the differ- 
ence was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and 
Goldsmith rattled away as usual. 

[dr. JOHNSON AND MACPHERSOn] 

Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson 

Edinburgh, Feb. 2, 1775. 

^ As to Macpherson, I am anxious to have from yourself a full and pointed 
account of what has passed between you and him. It is confidently told 
here that, before your book came out, he sent to you to let you ! iow ;hat 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 653 

he understood you meant to deny the authenticity of Ossian's poems; that 
the originals were in his possession; that you might have inspection of 
them, and might take the evidence of people skilled in the Erse language; 
and that he hoped, after this fair offer, you would not be so uncandid as 
to assert that he had refused reasonable proof. That you paid no regard 
to his message, but published your strong aitack upon him; and then he 
wrote a letter to you, in such terms as he thought suited to one who had 
not acted as a man of veracity. You may believe it gives me pain to hear 
your conduct represented as unfavorable, while I can only deny what is 
said on the ground that your character refutes it, without having any in- 
formation to oppose. Let me, I beg it of you, be furnished with a sufficient 
answer to any calumny upon this occasion. . . . 

To James Boswell, Esq. 

My dear Boswell: I am surprised that, knowing as you do the dispo-^ 
sition of your countrymen to tell lies in favor of each other, you can beat 
all affected by any reports that circulate among them. Macpherson never 
in his life offered me a sight of any original or of any evidence of any kind, 
but thought only of intimidating me by noise and threats, till my last 
answer — that I would not be deterred from detecting what I thought a 
cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian — put an end to our correspondence. 

The state of the question is this. He and Dr. Blair, whom I consider as 
deceived, say that he copied the poem from old manuscripts. His copies, 
if he had them, and I believe him to have none, are nothing. Where are 
the manuscripts? They can be shown if they exist, but they were never 
shown. De non existentibus et non apparentibus, says our law, eadem est 
ratio.^ No man has a claim to credit upon his own word, when better evi- 
dence, if he had it, may be easily produced. But so far as we can find, the 
Erse language was never written till very lately for thepurposesof religion. 
A nation that cannot write, or a language that was never written, has no 
manuscripts. 

But whatever he has he never offered to show. If old manuscripts 
should now be mentioned, I should, unless there were more evidence than 
can be easily had, suppose them another proof of Scotch conspiracy in 
national falsehood. 

Do not censure the expression ; you know it to be true. . . . 

I am now engaged, but in a little time I hope to do all you would have. 
My compliments to Madam and Veronica. 

I am, sir, your most humble servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

February 7, 1775. 

What words were used by Mr. Macpherson in his letter to 
the venerable sage, I have never heard; but they are generally 
said to have been of a nature very different from the language 

' " The same account is to be taken of things which do not appear as of those which do 
not exist." ^ 



V 



654 JAMES BOSWELL 

of literary contest. Dr. Johnson's answer appeared in the news- 
papers of the day, and has since been frequently republished, but 
not with perfect accuracy. I give it as dictated to me by him- 
self, written down in his presence, and authenticated by a note 
in his own handwriting, "This, I think, is a true copy." 

Mr. James Macpherson, 

I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me 
I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall 
do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think 
a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. 

What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture; 
I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to 
the public, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abil- 
ities, since your Homer, are not so formidable, and what I hear of your 
morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what 
you shall prove. You may print this if you will. 

Sam. Johnson. 

Mr. Macpherson little knew the character of Dr. Johnson, 
if he supposed that he could be easily intimidated ; for no man 
was ever more remarkable for personal courage. He had, in- 
deed, an awful dread of death, or rather "of something after 
death " ; and what rational man, who seriously thinks of quitting 
all that he has ever known, and going into a new and unknown 
state of being, can be without that dread? But his fear was from 
reflection; his courage natural. His fear, in that one instance, 
was the result of philosophical and rehgious consideration. He 
feared death, but he feared nothing else, not even what might 
occasion death. . . . Foote, who so successfully revived the old 
comedy by exhibiting living characters, had resolved to imitate 
Johnson on the stage, expecting great profits from the ridicule 
of so celebrated a man. Johnson being informed of his inten- 
tion, and being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies's, the book- 
seller, from whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies what 
was the common price of an oak stick; and being answered six- 
pence, "Why then, sir," said he, "give me leave to send your 
servant to purchase me a shilling one. I'll have a double quan- 
tity; for lam told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, 
and I am determined the fellow shall not do it with impunity." 
Davies took care to acquaint Foote of this, which effectually 
checked the wantonness of the mimic. Mr. Macpherson's men- 
aces made Johnson provide himself with the same implement of 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 655 

defense; and had he been attacked, I have no doubt that, old 
as he was, he would have made his corporal prowess be felt as 
much as his intellectual. 

[the dinner at the MESSRS, DILLY's] 

My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every 
description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an 
introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. 
Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of 
mankind. They had even attacked one another with some as- 
perity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with 
both. I could fully relish the excellence of each, for I have ever 
delighted in that intellectual chemistry which can separate good 
qualities from evil in the same person. ... I conceived an irre- 
sistible wish, if possible, to bring Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes 
together. How to manage it was a nice and difficult matter. 

My worthy booksellers and friends. Messieurs Dilly in the 
Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen 
a greater number of literary men than at any other, except that 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and 
some other gentlemen, on Wednesday, May 15.^ "Pray," said 
I, "let us have Dr. Johnson." "What, with Mr. Wilkes? Not 
for the world," said Mr. Edward Dilly; "Dr. Johnson would 
never forgive me." "Come," said I, "if you'll let me negotiate 
for you, I will be answerable that all shall go well." Dilly: 
"Nay, if you will take it upon you, I am sure I shall be very 
happy to see them both here." 

Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for 
Dr. Johnson, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actu- 
ated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I hoped 
I should gain my point. I was persuaded that if I had come upon 
him with a direct proposal, " Sir, will you dine in company with 
Jack Wilkes?" he would have flown into a passion, and would 
probably have answered, "Dine with Jack Wilkes? Sir, I'd as 
soon dine with Jack Ketch." I therefore, while we were sitting 
quietly by ourselves at his house in an evening, took occasion to 
open my plan thus: " Mr. Dilly, sir, sends his respectful compli- 
ments to you, and would be happy if you would do him the honor 
to dine with him on Wednesday next along with me, as I must 

1 1776. 



\ 



656 JAMES BOSWELL 

soon go to Scotland." Johnson : " Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. 
I will wait upon him." Boswell: "Provided, sir, I suppose, 
that the company which he is to have is agreeable to you?" 
Johnson: "What do you mean, sir? What do you take me for? 
Do you think I am so ignorant of the world as to imagine that 
% am to prescribe to a gentleman what company he is to have 
at his table?" Boswell: "I beg your pardon, sir, for wishing 
to prevent you from meeting people whom you might not hke. 
Perhaps he may have some of what he calls his patriotic friends 
with him." Johnson: "Well, sir, and what then? What care / 
for his 'patriotic friends'? Poh!" Boswell: "I should not be 
surprised to find Jack Wilkes there." Johnson: "And if Jack 
Wilkes should be there, what is that to me, sir? My dear friend, 
let us have no more of this. I am sorry to be angry with you, 
but really it is treating me strangely to talk to me as if I could 
not meet any company whatever, occasionally." Boswell: 
"Pray forgive me, sir, I meant well. But you shall meet who- 
ever comes, for me." Thus I secured him, and told Dilly that he 
would find him very well pleased to be one of his guests on the 
day appointed. 

Upon the much expected Wednesday, I called on him about 
half an hour before dinner, as I often did when we were to dine 
out together, to see that he was ready in time, and to accompany 
him. . . . 

When we entered Mr. Dilly 's drawing-room, he found himself 
in the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself snug 
and silent, watching how he would conduct himself. I observed 
him whispering to Mr. Dilly, "Who is that gentleman, sir?" 
"Mr. Arthur Lee." Johnson: "Too, too, too" (under his 
breath) , which was one of his habitual mutterings. Mr. Arthur 
Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was not 
only a "patriot " but an American. He was afterwards minister 
from the United States at the court of Madrid. "And who is the 
gentleman in lace?" "Mr. Wilkes, sir." This information con- 
founded him still more; he had some difl&culty to restrain him- 
self, and, taking up a book, sat down upon a window-seat and 
read, or at least kept his eye intently upon it for some time, till 
he composed himself. His feelings, I dare say, were awkward 
enough. But he no doubt recollected having rated me for sup- 
posing that he could be at all disconcerted by any company, and 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 657 

he therefore resolutely set himself to behave quite as an easy 
man of the world, who could adapt himself at once to the dis- 
position and manners of those whom he might chance to meet. 

The cheering sound of '' Dinner is upon the table " dissolved 
his reveries, and we all sat down without any symptom of ill- 
humor. There were present — beside Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. 
ArthurLee,whowas an old companion of mine when he studied 
physic at Edinburgh — Mr. (now Sir John) Miller, Dr. Lett- 
som, and Mr. Slater the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself 
next to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much atten- 
tion and pohteness that he gained upon him insensibly. No man 
eat more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice 
and delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to 
some fine veal. "Pray give me leave, sir; — It is better here — A 
little of the brown — Some fat, sir — A httle of the stuffing — 
Some gravy — Let me have the pleasure of giving you some but- 
ter — Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the 
lemon, perhaps, may have more zest." *' Sir, sir, I am obliged to 
you, sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him 
with a look for some time of "surly virtue,"^ but in a short 
while of complacency. . , . 

I attended Dr. Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to 
hear him tell Mrs. Williams how much he had been pleased with 
Mr. Wilkes's company, and what an agreeable day he had 
passed. 

[the lives of the poets] 

In 1 781 Johnson at last completed his Lives of the PoetSy 
of which he gives this account: " Some time in March I finished 
The Lives of the Poets, which I wrote in my usual way, dilator- 
ily and hastily, unwilling to work, and working with vigor and 
haste." In a memorandum previous to this, he says of them: 
"Written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to the pro- 
motion of piety." 

This is the work which, of all Dr. Johnson's writings, will per- 
haps be read most generally, and with most pleasure. Philo- 
logy and biography were his favorite pursuits, and those who 
lived most in intimacy with him heard him upon all occasions, 
when there was a proper opportunity, take delight in expati- 

1 A phrase from Johnson's London. 



658 JAMES BOSWELL 

ating upon the various merits of the Enghsh poets, — upon the 
niceties of their characters, and the events of their progress 
through the world which they contribute to illuminate. His 
mind was so full of that kind of information, and it was so well 
arranged in his memory, that in performing what he had under- 
taken in this way, he had little more to do than to put his 
thoughts upon paper, exhibiting first each poet's Hfe, and then 
subjoining a critical examination of his genius and works. But 
when he began to write, the subject swelled in such a manner 
that, instead of prefaces to each poet of no more than a few 
pages, as he had originally intended, he produced an ample, 
rich, and most entertaining view of them in every respect. . . . 
The booksellers, justly sensible of the great additional value of 
the copyright, presented him with another hundred pounds, 
over and above two hundred, for which his agreement was to 
furnish such prefaces as he thought fit. 

This was, however, but a small recompense for such a collec- 
tion of biography, and such principles and illustrations of crit- 
icism as, if digested and arranged by some modern Aristotle or 
Longinus, might form a code upon that subject, such as no other 
nation can show. As he was so good as to make me a present of 
the greatest part of the original and indeed only manuscript 
of this admirable work, I have an opportunity of observing 
with wonder the correctness with which he rapidly struck off 
such glowing composition. He may be assimilated to the Lady 
in Waller, who could impress with "Love at first sight": — 

Some other nymphs with colors faint, 
And pencil slow, may Cupid paint, 
And a weak heart in time destroy; 
She has a stamp, and prints the boy. 

^ . . . While the world in general was filled with admiration of 
Johnson's Lives of the Poets, there were narrow circles in which 
prejudice and resentment were fostered, and from which at- 
tacks of diff"erent sorts issued against him. By some violent 
Whigs he was arraigned of injustice to Milton; by some Cam- 
bridge men of depreciating Gray; and his expressing with a dig- 
nified freedom what he really thought of George Lord Lyttel- 
ton, gave offense to some of the friends of that nobleman, and 
particularly produced a declaration of war against him from 
Mrs. Montagu, the ingenious essayist on Shakespeare, between 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 659 

whom and his lordship a commerce of reciprocal compliments 
had long been carried on. In this war the smallest powers in al- 
liance with him were of course led to engage, at least on the de- 
fensive, and thus I for one was excluded from the enjoyment of 
"A Feast for Reason," such as Mr. Cumberland has described, 
with a keen yet just and delicate pen, in his Observer. These 
minute inconveniences gave not the least disturbance to John- 
son. He nobly said, when I talked to him of the feeble though 
shrill outcry which had been raised, "Sir, I considered myself as 
entrusted with a certain portion of truth. I have given my opin- 
ion sincerely; let them show where they think me wrong," 

[miscellanea] 

After his return to London from this excursion, I saw him 
frequently, but have few memorandums; I shall therefore 
here insert some particulars which I have collected at various 
times. . . . 

It having been mentioned to Dr. Johnson that a gentleman 
who had a son whom he imagined to have an extreme degree of 
timidity, resolved to send him to a public school, that he might 
acquire confidence, — "Sir," said Johnson, "this is a prepos- 
terous expedient for removing his infirmity; such a disposition 
should be cultivated in the shade. Placing him at a public 
school is forcing an owl upon day. " . . . 

A dull country magistrate gave Johnson a long tedious 
account of his exercising his criminal jurisdiction, the result of 
which was his having sentenced four convicts to transporta- 
tion. Johnson, in an agony of impatience to get rid of such a 
companion, exclaimed, "I heartily wish, sir, that I were a fifth." 

Johnson was present when a tragedy was read in which there 
occurred this line: — 

Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free. 

The company having admired it much, — "I cannot agree with 
you," said Johnson; "it might as well be said, — 

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." 

. . . Johnson having argued for some time with a pertina- 
cious gentleman, his opponent, who had talked in a very puz- 
zling manner, happened to say, "I don't understand you, sir"; 



66o JAMES BOSWELL 

upon which Johnson observed, *' Sir, I have found you an argu- 
ment, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding." 

. . . He disapproved of Lord Hailes for having modern- 
ized the language of the ever memorable John Hales of Eton, 
in an edition which his lordship pubKshed of that writer's 
works. "An author's language, sir," said he, "is a characteris- 
tical part of his composition, and is also characteristical of the 
age in which he writes. Besides, sir, when the language is 
changed we are not sure that the sense is the same. No, sir; I 
am sorry Lord Hailes has done this." 

Here it may be observed that his frequent use of the expres- 
sion No, sir, was not always to intimate contradiction; for he 
would say so when he was about to enforce an affirmative pro- 
position which had not been denied, as in the instance last men- 
tioned. I used to consider it as a kind of flag of defiance, as if he 
had said, "Any argument you may offer against this is not just. 
No, sir, it is not." It was like Falstaff's "I deny your major." 

Sir Joshua Reynolds having said that he took the altitude of 
'aTman's taste by his stories and his wit, and of his understand- 
ing by the remarks that he repeated, being always sure that he 
must be a weak man who quotes common things with an empha- 
sis as if they were oracles, Johnson agreed with him; and Sir 
Joshua having also observed that the real character of a man 
was found out by his amusements, Johnson added, "Yes, sir; no 
man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." 

I have mentioned Johnson's general aversion to pun. He 
once, however, endured one of mine. When we were talking of 
a numerous company in which he had distinguished himself 
highly, I said, " Sir, you were a cod surrounded by smelts. Is not 
this enough for you? at a time too when you were not fishing for 
a compliment?" He laughed at this with a complacent appro- 
bation. Old Mr. Sheridan observed, upon my mentioning it to 
him, " He liked your compHment so well, he was wilhng to take 
it with pun sauce. ^^ For my own part, I think no innocent spe- 
cies of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed, and that a good 
pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of Hvely 
conversation. . . . 

When I pointed out to him in the newspaper one of Mr. Grat- 
tan's animated and glowing speeches, in favor of the freedom of 
Ireland, in which this expression occurred (I know not if accu- 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 66t 

rately taken) : " We will persevere till there is not one link of t! 
English chain left to clank upon the rags of the meanest beggar 
in Ireland, " — "Nay, sir," said Johnson, "don't you perceive 
that one link cannot clank?". . . 

It may be worth remarking, among the minuticB of my collec- 
tion, that Johnson was once drawn to serve in the militia, the 
Trained Bands of the city of London, and that Mr. Rackstrow, 
of the Museum in Fleet Street, was his colonel. It may be 
believed he did not serve in person; but the idea, with all its 
circumstances, is certainly laughable. He upon that occasion 
provided himself with a musket, and with a sword and belt, 
which I have seen hanging in his closet. 

He was very constant to those whom he once employed, if 
they gave him no reason to be displeased. When somebody 
talked of being imposed on in the purchase of tea and sugar, and 
such articles, "That will not be the case," said he, "if you go to 
a stately shop, as I always do. In such a shop it is not worth 
their while to take a petty advantage." 

An author of most anxious and restless vanity being men- 
tioned, "Sir," said he, "there is not a young sapling upon Par- 
nassus more severely blown about by every wind of criticism 
than that poor fellow." 

The difference, he observed, between a well-bred and an ill- 
bred man is this: "One immediately attracts your liking, the 
other your aversion. You love the one till you find reason to 
hate him; you hate the other till you find reason to love 
him." 

The wife of one of his acquaintance had fraudulently made a 
purse for herself out of her husband's fortune. Feeling a proper 
compunction in her last moments, she confessed how much she 
had secreted; but before she could tell where it was placed, she 
was seized with a convulsive fit and expired. Her husband said 
he was more hurt by her want of confidence in him than by the 
loss of his money. "I told him," said Johnson, " that he should 
console himself; for perhaps the money might be found, and he 
was sure that his wife was gone." 

A foppish physician once reminded Johnson of his having 
been in company with him on a former occasion. " I do not re- 
member it, sir." The physician still insisted, adding that he that 
day wore so fine a coat that it must have attracted his notice. 



662 JAMES BOSWELL 

" Sir," said Johnson, "had you been dipped in Pactolus, I should 
not have noticed you." 

He seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style; for 
when he had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought 
translated into it. Talking of the comedy of The Rehearsal, he 
said, "It has not wit enough to keep it sweet." This was 
easy; he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more 
round sentence: "It has not vitahty enough to preserve it from 
putrefaction." 

He censured a writer of entertaining travels for assuming 
a feigned character, saying (in his sense of the word), "He 
carries out one lie; we know not how many he brings back." At 
another time, talking of the same person, he observed, "Sir, 
your assent to a man whom you have never known to falsify, 
is a debt; but after you have known a man to falsify, your 
assent to him then is a favor." . . . 

When I observed to him that painting was so far inferior to 
poetry, that the story or even emblem which it communicates 
must be previously known; and mentioned, as a laughable in- 
stance of this, that a httle miss, on seeing a picture of Justice 
with the scales, had exclaimed to me, "See, there's a woman 
selling sweetmeats," he said, "Painting, sir, can illustrate, but 
cannot inform." 

No man was more ready to make an apology, when he had 
censured unjustly, than Johnson. When a proof-sheet of one of 
his works was brought to him, he found fault with the mode in 
which a part of it was arranged, refused to read it, and in a pas- 
sion desired that the compositor might be sent to him. The 
compositor was Mr. Manning, a decent, sensible man, who had 
composed about one half of his Dictionary, when in Mr. 
Strahan's printing-house, and a great part of his Lives of the 
Poets, when in that of Mr. Nichols, and who (in his seventy- 
seventh year), when in Mr. Baldwin's printing-house, composed 
a part of the first edition of this work concerning him. By pro- 
ducing the manuscript he at once satisfied Dr. Johnson that he 
was not to blame. Upon which Johnson candidly and earnestly 
said to him, "Mr. Compositor, I ask your pardon; Mr. Com- 
positor, I ask your pardon again and again." 

His generous humanity to the miserable was almost beyond 
example. The following instance is well attested. Coming home 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 6tj 

late one night, he found a poor woman lying in the street so 
much exhausted that she could not walk. He took her upon his 
back, and carried her to his house, when he discovered that she 
was one of those wretched females who had fallen into the low- 
est state of vice, poverty, and disease. Instead of harshly up- 
braiding her, he had her taken care of with all tenderness for a 
long time, at a considerable expense, till she was restored to 
health, and endeavored to put her into a virtuous way of living. 

[conclusion] 

The character of Samuel Johnson has, I trust, been so devel- 
oped in the course of this work, that they who have honored it 
with a perusal may be considered as well acquainted with him. 
As, however, it may be expected that I should collect into one 
view the capital and distinguishing features of this extraor- 
dinary man, I shall endeavor to acquit myself of that part of 
my biographical undertaking, however difficult it may be to do 
that which many of my readers will do better for themselves. 

His figure was large and well formed, and his countenance of 
the cast of an ancient statue; yet his appearance was rendered 
strange and somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, by the 
scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal 
touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the 
use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even 
supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as 
far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So 
morbid was his temperament that he never knew the natural 
joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked, it 
was like the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he 
had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if 
in a balloon. That with his constitution and habits of life he 
should have lived seventy-five years is a proof that an inherent 
vivida vis is a powerful preservative of the human frame. 

Man is, in general, made up of contradictory qualities; and 
these will ever show themselves in strange succession where a 
consistency, in appearance at least, if not reality, has not 
been attained by long habits of philosophical discipHne. In pro- 
portion to the native vigor of the mind, the contradictory quali- 
ties will be the more prominent, and more difficult to be adjusted ; 
and therefore we are not to wonder that Johnson exhibited an 



664 JAMES BOSWELL 

eminent example of this remark which I have made upon human 
nature. At different times he seemed a different man, in some 
respects; not, however, in any great or essential article, upon 
which he fully employed his mind, and settled certain princi- 
ples of duty, but only in his manners, and in the display of argu- 
ment and fancy in his talk. He was prone to superstition, but 
not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to 
a beUef of the marvelous and the mysterious, his vigorous rea- 
son examined the evidence with jealousy. He was a sincere and 
zealous Christian, of high Church-of-England and monarchical 
principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned; 
and had, perhaps, at an early period narrowed his mind too 
much, both as to religion and poKtics. His being impressed with 
the danger of extreme latitude in either, though he was of a very 
independent spirit, occasioned his appearing somewhat unfavor- 
able to the prevalence of that noble freedom of sentiment which 
is the best possession of man. Nor can it be denied that he had 
many prejudices, which, however, frequently suggested many of 
his pointed sayings, that rather show a playfulness of fancy 
than any settled malignity. He was steady and inflexible in 
maintaining the obligations of religion and morality, both from 
a regard for the order of society, and from a veneration for the 
Great Source of all order; correct, nay, stern in his taste; hard 
to please, and easily offended; impetuous and irritable in his 
temper, but of a most humane and benevolent heart, which 
showed itself not only in a most liberal charity, as far as his 
circumstances would allow, but in a thousand instances of 
active benevolence. He was afflicted with a bodily disease 
which made him often restless and fretful, and with a consti- 
tutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the bright- 
ness of his fancy and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course 
of thinking; we therefore ought not to wonder at his sallies of 
impatience and passion at any time, especially when provoked 
by obtrusive ignorance or presuming petulance; and allowance 
must be made for his uttering hasty and satirical sallies even 
against his best friends. And surely, when it is considered 
that "amidst sickness and sorrow" he exerted his faculties in 
so many works for the benefit of mankind, and particularly 
that he achieved the great and admirable Dictionary of our 
language, yve must be astonished at his resolution. The sol- 



THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 665 

emn text, "Of him to whom much is given much will be re- 
quired," seems to have been ever present to his mind, in a 
rigorous sense, and to have made him dissatisfied with his la- 
bors and acts of goodness, however comparatively great; so that 
the unavoidable consciousness of his superiority was, in that re- 
spect, a cause of disquiet. He suflfered so much from this, and 
from the gloom which perpetually haunted him and made soli- 
tude frightful, that it may be said of him, " If in this life only he 
had hope, he was of all men most miserable." He loved praise, 
when it was brought to him, but was too proud to seek for it. 
He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. As he was general and 
unconfined in his studies, he cannot be considered as master of 
any one particular science; but he had accumulated a vast and 
various collection of learning and knowledge, which was so ar- 
ranged in his mind as to be ever in readiness to be brought forth. 
But his superiority over other learned men consisted chiefly 
in what may be called the art of thinking, the art of using his 
mind, — a certain continual power of seizing the useful sub- 
^stShce of all that he knew, and exhibiting it in a clear and forci- 
ble manner; so that knowledge, which we often see to be no 
better than lumber in men of dull understanding, was in him 
true, evident, and actual wisdom. His moral precepts are prac- 
tical, for they are drawn from an intimate acquaintance with 
human nature. His maxims carry conviction, for they are 
founded on the baisis of common sense, and a very attentive and 
minute survey of real life. His mind was so full of imagery that 
he might have been perpetually a poet ; yet it is remarkable that, 
however rich his prose is in this respect, his poetical pieces in 
general have not much of that splendor, but are rather distin- 
guished by strong sentiment and acute observation, conveyed in 
harmonious and energetic verse, particularly heroic couplets. 
Though usually grave and even awful in his deportment, he 
possessed uncommon and peculiar powers of wit and humor; 
he frequently indulged himself in colloquial pleasantry, and the 
heartiest merriment was often enjoyed in his company; with this 
great advantage, that it was entirely free from any poisonous 
tincture of vice and impiety, — it was salutary to those who 
shared in it. He had accustomed himself to such accuracy in his 
common conversation, that he at all times expressed his thoughts 
with great force, and an elegant choice of language, the effect of 



666 JAMES BOSWELL 

which was aided by his having a loud voice and a slow, deliberate 
utterance. In him were united a most logical head with a most 
fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage 
in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for 
the moment. Exulting in his intellectual strength and dexterity, 
he could, when he pleased, be the greatest sophist that ever con- 
tended in the Hsts of declamation; and, from a spirit of contra- 
diction and a delight in showing his powers, he would often 
maintain the wrong side with equal warmth and ingenuity; so 
that when there was an audience, his real opinions could seldom 
be gathered from his talk, though when he was in company with 
a single friend he would discuss a subject with genuine fairness. 
But he was too conscientious to make error permanent and per- 
nicious by deliberately writing it; and in all his numerous works 
he earnestly inculcated what appeared to him to be the truth, 
his piety being constant, and the ruling principle of all his 
conduct. 

Such was Samuel Johnson, a man whose talents, acquirements, 
and virtues were so extraordinary that the more his character is 
considered, the more he will be regarded by the present age, and 
by posterity, with admiration and reverence. 




WILLIAM GODWIN 
AN INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE 

AND ITS INFLUENCE ON GENERAL VIRTUE AND 
HAPPINESS 

1793 

[This work, the chief theoretical representative in England of the 
" spirit of 1789," had a large sale and exerted no little influence, even after 
the time when Godwin himself had modified his earlier views. The ex- 
tracts reprinted below represent some of the more famous instances of the 
author's radicalism; the student should perhaps be cautioned not to con- 
sider them as altogether typical of the tenor of the work as a whole. They 
are from Book 11, chap, vi; Book ui, chapters v and vi; Book v, chap, xi; 
and Book viii, chap, vi.] 

THE EXERCISE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 

. . . Punishment is not the appropriate mode of correcting the 
errors of mankind. It will probably be admitted that the only- 
true end of punishment is correction. That question will be dis- 
cussed in another part of the present inquiry. I have done some- 
thing which, though wrong in itself, I beheve to be right; or I 
have done something which I usually admit to be wrong; but my 
conviction upon the subject is not so clear and forcible as to pre- 
vent my yielding to a powerful temptation. There can be no 
doubt that the proper way of conveying to my understanding a 
truth of which I am ignorant, or of impressing upon me a firmer 
persuasion of a truth with which I am acquainted, is by an ap- 
peal to my reason. Even an angry expostulation with me upon 
my conduct will but excite similar passions in me, and cloud in- 
stead of illuminate my understanding. There is certainly a way 
of expressing truth with such benevolence as to command at- 
tention, and such evidence as to enforce conviction in all cases 
whatever. 

Punishment inevitably excites in the sufferer, and ought to 
excite, a sense of injustice. Let its purpose be to convince me of 
the truth of a proposition which I at present believe to be false. 
It is not abstractedly considered of the nature of an argument, 



'668 WILLIAM GODWIN 

and therefore it cannot begin with producing conviction. Pun- 
ishment is a specious name, but is in reality nothing more than 
force put upon one being by another who happens to be stronger. 
Now strength apparently does not constitute justice, nor ought 
" might," according to a trite proverb, to " overcome right." The 
case of punishment, which we are now considering, is the case of 
you and I differing in opinion, and your telling me that you must 
be right, since you have a more brawny arm , or have appHed your 
mind more to the acquiring skill in your weapons than I have. 

But let us suppose that I am convinced of my error, but that 
my conviction is superficial and fluctuating, and the object you 
propose is to render it durable and profound. Ought it to be 
thus durable and profound? There are no doubt argumxCnts and 
reasons calculated to render it so. Is it in reality problematical, 
and do you wish by the weight of your blows to make up for the 
deficiency of your logic? This can never be defended. An appeal 
to force must appear to both parties, in proportion to the sound- 
ness of their understanding, to be a confession of imbecility. He 
that has recourse to it would have no occasion for this expedient, 
if he were sufficiently acquainted with the powers of that truth 
it is his office to communicate. If there be any man who, in suf- 
fering punishment, is not conscious of injustice, he must have 
had his mind previously debased by slavery, and his sense of 
moral right and wrong blunted by a series of oppression. . , . 

Notwithstanding all these objections, it would be difficult to 
find a country respecting which we could say that the inhabit- 
ants might with safety be dismissed from the operation of pun- 
ishment. So mixed is human character, so wild are its excur- 
sions, so calamitous and detestable are the errors into which it 
occasionally falls, that something more than argument seems 
necessary for their suppression. Human beings are such tyros 
in the art of reasoning, that the wisest of us often prove im- 
potent in our attempts, where an instant effect was most power- 
fully wanted. While I stand still to reason with the thief, the 
assassin, or the oppressor, they hasten to new scenes of devas- 
tation, and with unsparing violence confound all the principles 
of human society. I should obtain little success by the aboli- 
tion of punishment, unless I could at the same time abolish 
those causes that generate temptation and make punishment 
necessary. Meanwhile the arguments already adduced may be 



POLITICAL JUSTICE 669 

sufficient to show that punishment is always an evil, and to per- 
suade us never to recur to it but from the most evident neces- 
sity. 

LEGISLATION — OBEDIENCE 

Having thus far investigated the nature of political functions, 
it seems necessary that some explanation should be given in this 
place upon the subject of legislation. Who is it that has the 
authority to make laws? What are the characteristics by which 
that man or body of men is to be known, in whom the faculty is 
vested of legislating for the rest? 

To these questions the answer is exceedingly simple: legisla- 
tion, as it has been usually understood, is not an affair of human 
competence. Reason is the only legislator, and her decrees are 
irrevocable and uniform. The functions of society extend not to 
the making, but the interpreting of law; it cannot decree; it 
can only declare that which the nature of things has already de- 
creed, and the propriety of which irresistibly flows from the cir- 
cumstances of the case. Montesquieu says that "in a free state 
every man will be his own legislator." This is not true, setting 
apart the functions of the community, unless in the limited 
sense already explained. It is the office of conscience to deter- 
mine, "not hke an Asiatic cadi, according to the ebbs and flows 
of his own passions, but Hke a British judge, who makes no new 
law, but faithfully declares that law which he finds already 
written." 

The same distinction is to be made upon the subject of author- 
ity. All political power is, strictly speaking, executive. It has 
appeared to be necessary, with respect to men as we at present 
find them, that force should sometimes be employed in repress- 
ing injustice; and for the same reasons it appears that this force 
should as far as possible be vested in the community. To the 
pubHc support of justice, therefore, the authority of the com- 
munity extends. But no sooner does it wander in the smallest 
degree from the great fine of justice, than its authority is at an 
end; it stands upon a level with the obscurest individual, and 
every man is bound to resist its decisions. 

. . . The object cf government, as has been already demon- 
strated, is the exertion of force. Now force can never be re- 
garded as an appeal to the understanding; and therefore obe- 



670 WILLIAM GODWIN 

dience, which is an act of the understanding or will, can have 
no legitimate connection with it. I am bound to submit to jus- 
tice and truth, because they approve themselves to my judg- 
ment. I am bound to cooperate with government, as far as it 
appears to me to coincide with these principles. But I submit to 
government when I think it erroneous, merely because I have 
no remedy. 

No truth can be more simple, at the same time that no truth 
has been more darkened by the glosses of interested individ- 
uals, than that one man can in no case be bound to yield obe- 
dience to any other man or set of men upon earth. 

There is one rule to which we are universally bound to con- 
form ourselves, justice, — the treating every man precisely as 
his usefulness and worth demand, — the acting under every cir- 
cumstance in the manner that shall procure the greatest quan- 
tity of general good. When we have done thus, what province 
is there left to the disposal of obedience? . . . 

The abuse of the doctrine of confidence has been the source of 
more calamities to mankind than all the other errors of the hu- 
man understanding. Depravity would have gained little ground 
in the world, if every man had been in the exercise of his inde- 
pendent judgment. The instrument by which extensive mis- 
chiefs have in all ages been perpetrated, has been the principle 
of many men being reduced to mere machines in the hands of a 
few. Man, while he consults his own understanding, is the orna- 
ment of the universe. Man, when he surrenders his reason, and 
becomes the partisan of implicit faith and passive obedience, is 
the most mischievous of animals. Ceasing to examine every 
proposition that comes before him for the direction of his con- 
duct, he is no longer the capable subject of moral instruction. 
He is, in the instant of submission, the blind instrument of every 
nefarious purpose of his principal; and, when left to himself, is 
open to the seduction of injustice, cruelty, and profligacy. 

These reasonings lead to a proper explanation of the word 
subject. If by the subject of any government we mean a person 
whose duty it is to obey, the true inference from the preceding 
principles is that no government has any subjects. If on the con- 
trary we mean a person whom the government is bound to pro- 
tect, or may justly restrain, the word is sufficiently admissible. 



POLITICAL JUSTICE 671 

MORAL EFFECTS OF ARISTOCRACY 

Of all the principles of justice there is none so material to the 
moral rectitude of mankind as this, that no man can be distin- 
guished but by his personal merit. Why not endeavor to reduce 
to practice so simple and sublime a lesson? When a man has 
proved himself a benefactor to the public, when he has already 
by laudable perseverance cultivated in himself talents which 
need only encouragement and public favor to bring them to 
maturity, let that man be honored. In a state of society where 
fictitious distinctions are unknown, it is impossible he should 
not be honored. But that a man should be looked up to with 
serviHtyand awe, because the king has bestowed on him a spuri- 
ous name, or decorated him with a ribbon; that another should 
wallow in luxury, because his ancestor three centuries ago bled 
in the quarrel of Lancaster or York; do we imagine that these 
iniquities can be practiced without injury? 

Let those who entertain this opinion converse a little with the 
lower orders of mankind. They will perceive that the unfortun- 
ate wretch who, with unremitted labor, finds himself incapable 
adequately to feed and clothe his family, has a sense of injus- 
tice rankling at his heart. 

One whom distress has spited with the world 
Is he whom tempting fiends would pitch upon 
To do such deeds as make the prosperous men 
Lift up their hands and wonder who could do them. 

Such is the education of the human species. Such is the fabric 
of political society. 

But let us suppose that their sense of injustice were less acute 
than it is here described, what favorable inference can be drawn 
from that? Is not the injustice real? If the minds of men be so 
withered and stupefied by the constancy with which it is prac- 
ticed, that they do not feel the rigor that grinds them into 
nothing, how does that improve the picture? 

Let us for a moment give the reins to reflection, and en- 
deavor accurately to conceive the state of mankind where jus- 
tice should form the public and general principle. In that case 
our moral feelings would assume a firm and wholesome tone, for 
they would not be perpetually counteracted by examples that 
weakened their energy and confounded their clearness. Men 



672 WILLIAM GODWIN 

would be fearless, because they would know that there were no 
legal snares lying in wait for their lives. They would be cour- 
ageous, because no man would be pressed to the earth that an- 
other might enjoy immoderate luxury, because every one would 
be secure of the just reward of his industry and prize of his exer- 
tions. Jealousy and hatred would cease, for they are the off- 
spring of injustice. Every man would speak truth with his 
neighbor, for there would be no temptation to falsehood and 
deceit. Mind would find its level, for there would be everything 
to encourage and to animate. Science would be unspeakably 
improved, for understanding would convert into a real power, 
no longer an ignis fatiius, shining and expiring by turns, and 
leading us into sloughs of sophistry, false science, and specious 
mistake. All men would be disposed to avow their dispositions 
and actions; none would endeavor to suppress the just eulogium 
of his neighbor, for, so long as there were tongues to record, the 
suppression would be impossible ; none fear to detect the mis- 
conduct of his neighbor, for there would be no laws converting 
the sincere expression of our convictions into a libel. 

Let us fairly consider for a moment what is the amount of in- 
justice included in the institution of aristocracy. I am born, sup- 
pose, a Polish prince, with an income of £300,000 per annum. 
You are born a manorial serf or a Creolian negro, by the law of 
your birth attached to the soil, and transferable by barter or 
otherwise to twenty successive lords. In vain shall be your most 
generous efforts and your unwearied industry to free yourself 
from the intolerable yoke. Doomed by the law of your birth to 
wait at the gates of the palace you must never enter, to sleep un- 
der a ruined weather-beaten roof, while your master sleeps un- 
der canopies of state, to feed on putrefied offals while the world 
is ransacked for delicacies for his table, to labor without modera- 
tion of limit under a parching sun, while he basks in perpetual 
sloth, and to be rewarded at last with contempt, reprimand, 
stripes, and mutilation. In fact the case is worse than this. I 
could endure all that injustice or caprice could inflict, provided 
I possessed in the resource of a firm mind the power of looking 
down with pity on my tyrant, and of knowing that I had that 
within, — that sacred character of truth, virtue, and fortitude, 
— which all his injustice could not reach. But a slave and a serf 
are condemned to stupidity and vice, as well as to calamity. 



POLITICAL JUSTICE 673 

Is all this nothing? Is all this necessary for the maintenance 
of civil order? Let it be recollected that for this distinction 
there is not the smallest foundation in the nature of things; that, 
as we have already said, there is no particular mold for the con- 
struction of lords, and that they are born neither better nor 
worse than the poorest of their dependents. It is this structure 
of aristocracy, in all its sanctuaries and fragments, against which 
reason and philosophy have declared war. It is alike unjust, 
whether we consider it in the castes of India, the villainage of 
the feudal system, or the despotism of the patricians of ancient 
Rome dragging their debtors into personal servitude to expiate 
loans they could not repay. Mankind will never be in an emi- 
nent degree virtuous and happy, till each man shall possess 
that portion of distinction, and no more, to which lie is entitled 
by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally 
the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be 
delivered from the littleness of tyranny, and the other from the 
brutalizing operation of servitude, ... 

[evils of marriage] 

... It is absurd to expect that the inclinations and wishes 
of two human beings should coincide through any long period 
of time. To oblige them to act and to live together is to sub- 
ject them to some inevitable portion of thwarting, bickering, 
and unhappiness. This cannot be otherwise, so long as man 
has failed to reach the standard of absolute perfection. The 
supposition that I must have a companion for life, is the result 
of a complication of vices. It is the dictate of cowardice, and 
not of fortitude. It flows from the desire of being loved and 
esteemed for something that is not desert. 

But the evil of marriage as it is practiced in European coun- 
tries lies deeper than this. The habit is, for a thoughtless and 
romantic youth of each sex to come together, to see each other 
for a few times and under circumstances full of delusion, and 
then to vow to each other eternal attachment. What is the con- 
sequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves 
deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable 
mistake. They are presented with the strongest imaginable 
temptation to become the dupes of falsehood. They are led to 
conceive it their wisest policy to shut their eyes upon realities, 



674 . WILLIAM GODWIN 

happy if by any perversion of intellect they can persuade them- 
selves that they were right in their first crude opinion of their 
companion. The institution of marriage is a system of fraud; 
and men who carefully mislead their judgments in the daily af- 
fair of their life, must always have a crippled judgment in every 
other concern. We ought to dismiss our mistake as soon as it is 
detected; but we are taught to cherish it. We ought to be inces- 
sant in our search after virtue and worth ; but we are taught to 
check our inquiry, and shut our eyes upon the most attractive 
and admirable objects. Marriage is law, and the worst of all 
laws. Whatever our understandings may tell us of the person 
from whose connection we should derive the greatest improve- 
ment, of the worth of one woman and the demerits of another, 
we are obliged to consider what is law, and not what is justice. 

Add to this that marriage is an affair of property, and the 
worst of all properties. So long as two human beings are for- 
bidden by positive institution to follow the dictates of their 
own mind, prejudice is alive and vigorous. So long as I seek to 
engross one woman to myself, and to prohibit my neighbor from 
proving his superior desert and reaping the fruits of it, I am 
guilty of the most odious of all monopohes. Over this imaginary 
prize men watch with perpetual jealousy, and one man will find 
his desires and his capacity to circumvent as much excited as 
the other is excited to traverse his projects and frustrate his 
hopes. As long as this state of society continues, philanthropy 
will be crossed and checked in a thousand ways, and the still 
augmenting stream of abuse will continue to flow. 

The abolition of marriage will be attended with no evils. . We 
are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal 
lust and depravity. But it really happens, in this as in other 
cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our 
vices, irritate and multiply them. Not to say that the same sen- 
timents of justice and happiness which, in a state of equal pro- 
perty, would destroy the relish for luxury, would decrease our 
inordinate appetites of every kind, and lead us universally to 
prefer the pleasures of intellect to the pleasures of sense. . . . 

It cannot be definitively affirmed whether it be known in such 
a state of society who is the father of each individual child. But 
it may be affirmed that such knowledge will be of no importance. 
It is aristocracy, self-love, and family pride that teach us to set 



POLITICAL JUSTICE 675 

a value upon it at present. I ought to prefer no human being to 
another because that being is my father, my wife, or my son, but 
because, for reasons which equally appeal to all understandings, 
that being is entitled to preference. One among the measures 
which will successively be dictated by the spirit of democracy, 
and that probably at no great distance, is the abolition of sur- 
names. . . . 



ANN RADCLIFFE 
THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO 

1794 

[This romance, the best known of its author's works, is sometimes re- 
garded as the first of the "tales of terror" (but see Walpole's Otranto, 
above). The following extract exemplifies Mrs. Radcliffe's "peculiar art 
of exciting terror and impatient curiosity by the invention of incidents 
apparently supernatural, but eventually receiving a natural explanation," 
and at the same time her use of natural scenery as the setting for the 
action of her romances, on account of which she has been considered "a 
precursor of that general movement towards the delineation and com- 
prehension of external nature which was to characterize the nineteenth 
century." (Both quotations are from Dr. Richard Garnett's article in the 
Dictionary of National Biography.) The passages here reprinted are from 
chapters XVIII and XIX.] 

, . . At length the travelers began to ascend among the Apen- 
nines. The immense pine forests, M^hich at that period overhung 
these mountains, and between which the road wound, excluded 
all view but of the cliffs aspiring above, except that now and then 
an opening through the dark woods allowed the eye a moment- 
ary glimpse of the country below. The gloom of these shades, 
their solitary silence, except when the breeze swept over their 
summits, the tremendous precipices of the mountains that came 
partially to the eye, each assisted to raise the solemnity of Emily's 
feehngs into awe. She saw only images of gloomy grandeur or of 
dreadful sublimity around her; other images, equally gloomy 
and equally terrible, gleamed on her imagination. She was go- 
ing, she scarcely knew whither, under the dominion of a person 
from whose arbitrary disposition she had already suffered so 
much, to marry, perhaps, a man who possessed neither her af- 
fection nor esteem, or to endure, beyond the hope of succor, 
whatever punishment revenge — and that Itahan revenge — 
might dictate. The more she considered what might be the mo- 
tive of the journey, the more she became convinced that it was 
for the purpose of concluding her nuptials with Count Morano, 
with the secrecy which her resolute resistance had made neces- 



1 



THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO 677 

sary to the honor, if not the safety, of Montoni. From the deep 
solitudes into which she was emerging, and from the gloomy 
castle of which she had heard some mysterious hints, her sick 
heart recoiled in despair, and she experienced that, though her 
mind was already occupied by peculiar distress, it was still alive 
to the influence of a new and local circumstance; why else did 
she shudder at the image of this desolate castle? 

As the travelers still ascended among the pine forests, steep 
rose over steep, the mountains seemed to multiply as they went, 
and what was the summit of one eminence proved to be only the 
base of another. At length they reached a little plain, where the 
drivers stopped to rest the mules, whence a scene of such extent 
and magnificence opened below as drew even from Madame 
Montoni a note of admiration. Emily lost, for a moment, her 
sorrows in the immensity of nature. Beyond the amphitheatre 
of mountains that stretched below, whose tops appeared as 
numerous almost as the waves of the sea, and whose feet were 
concealed by the forests, extended the campagna of Italy, where 
cities, and rivers, and woods, and all the glow of cultivation, 
were mingled in gay confusion. The Adriatic bounded the hori- 
zon, into which the Po and the Brenta, after winding through the 
whole extent of the landscape, poured their fruitful waves. 
Emily gazed long on the splendors of the world she was quitting, 
of which the whole magnificence seemed thus given to her sight 
only to increase her regret on leaving it. . . . 

From this sublime scene the travelers continued to ascend 
among the pines, till they entered a narrow pass of the moun- 
tains, which shut out every feature of the distant country, and 
in its stead exhibited only tremendous crags, impending over 
the road, where no vestige of humanity, or even of vegetation, 
appeared, except here and there the trunk and scathed branches 
of an oak, that hung nearly headlong from the rock into which 
its strong roots had fastened. This pass, which led into the 
heart of the Apennines, at length opened to day, and a scene of 
mountains stretched in long perspective, as wild as any the 
travelers had yet passed. Still vast pine forests hung upon their 
base, and crowned the ridgy precipice that rose perpendicularly 
from the vale, while above the rolling mists caught the sun- 
beams, and touched their cliffs with all the magical coloring of 
light and shade. The scene seemed perpetually changing, and 



678 ANN RADCLIFFE 

its features to assume new forms, as the winding road brought 
them to the eye in different attitudes; while the shifting vapors, 
now partially conceaHng their minuter beauties, and now il- 
luminating them with splendid tints, assisted the illusions of 
the sight. 

Though the deep valleys between these mountains were, for 
the most part, clothed with pines, sometimes an abrupt opening 
presented a perspective of only barren rocks, with a cataract 
flashing from their summit among broken cliffs, till its waters, 
reaching the bottom, foamed along with louder fury; and some- 
times pastoral scenes exhibited their " green delights " in the nar- 
row vales, smiling amidst surrounding horror. There herds and 
flocks of goats and sheep, browsing under the shade of hanging 
woods, and the shepherd's little cabin, reared on the margin of 
a clear stream, presented a sweet picture of repose. 

Wild and romantic as were these scenes, their character had 
far less of the subhme than had those of the Alps, which guard 
the entrance of Italy. Emily was often elevated, but seldom 
felt those emotions of indescribable awe which she had so con- 
tinually experienced in her passage over the Alps. 

Towards the close of the day, the road wound into a deep 
valley. Mountains, whose shaggy steeps appeared to be inac- 
cessible, almost surrounded it. To the east, a vista opened, and 
exhibited the Apennines in their darkest horrors; and the long 
perspective of retiring summits rising over each other, their 
ridges clothed with pines, exhibited a stronger image of grandeur 
than any that Emily had yet seen. The sun had just sunk below 
the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow 
stretched athwart the valley, but his sloping rays, shooting 
through an opening in the cliffs, touched with a yellow gleam 
the summits of the forest that hung upon the opposite steeps, 
and streamed in full splendor upon the towers and battlements 
of a castle that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of 
a precipice above. The splendor of these illuminated objects was 
heightened by the contrasted shade which involved the valley 
below. 

''There," said Montoni, speaking for the first time in several 
hours, "is Udolpho." 

Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she 
understood to be Montoni 's; for, though it was now Ugh ted up 



i 



THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO 679 

by the setting sun, the Gothic greatness of its features, and its 
moldering walls of dark gray stone, rendered it a gloomy and 
sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, 
leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and 
deeper as the thin vapor crept up the mountain, while the bat- 
tlements were still tipped with splendor. From those too the 
rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the 
solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it 
seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance 
on all who dared to invade its sohtary reign. As the twilight 
deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity; and 
Emily continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone 
seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade 
the carriages soon after began to ascend. 

The extent and darkness of these tall woods awakened terrific 
images in Emily's mind, and she almost expected to see banditti 
start up from under the trees. At length the carriages emerged 
upon a heathy rock, and soon after reached the castle gates, 
where the deep tones of the portal bell, which was struck upon 
to give notice of their arrival, increased the fearful emotions 
that had assailed Emily. While they waited till the servant 
within should come to open the gates, she anxiously surveyed 
the edifice; but the gloom that overspread it allowed her to dis- 
tinguish little more than a part of its outline, with the massy 
wall of the ramparts, and to know that it was vast, ancient, and 
dreary. From the parts she saw, she judged of the heavy strength 
and extent of the whole. The gateway before her, leading into 
the courts, was of gigantic size, and was defended by two round 
towers, embattled, where, instead of banners, now waved long 
grass and wild plants that had taken root among the moldering 
stones, and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled past, over 
the desolation around them. The towers were united by a cur- 
tain, pierced and embattled also, below which appeared the 
pointed arch of a huge portcullis, surmounting the gates. From 
these the walls of the ramparts extended to other towers, over- 
looking the precipice, whose shattered outline, appearing on a 
gleam that fingered in the west, told of the ravages of war. Be- 
yond these all was lost in the obscurity of evening. 

While Emily gazed with awe upon the scene, footsteps were 
heard within the gates, and the undrawing of bolts, after which 



68o ANN RADCLIFFE 

an ancient servant of the castle appeared, forcing back the huge 
folds of the portal to admit his lord. As the carriage- wheels 
rolled heavily under the portculHs, Emily's heart sunk, and she 
seemed as if she was going into her prison. The gloomy court 
into which she passed served to confirm the idea, and her im- 
agination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more 
terrors than her reason could justify. . . . 

"Do you know which is my room?" said she to Annette, as 
they crossed the hall. 

''Yes, I believe I do, ma'amselle; but this is such a strange, 
rambhng place! I have been lost in it already. The}^ call it 
the double chamber, over the south rampart, and I went up 
this great staircase. My lady's room is at the other end of the 
castle." 

Emily ascended the marble staircase, and came to the corri- 
dor, as they passed through which, Annette resumed her chat. 
"What a wild, lonely place this is, ma'am! I shall be quite 
frightened to live in it. How often and how often have I wished 
myself in France again ! I little thought, when I came with my 
lady to see the world, that I should ever be shut up in such a 
place as this, or I would never have left my own country. — 
This way, ma'amselle, down this turning. I can almost believe 
in giants again, and such like, for this is just hke one of their 
castles; and some night or other I suppose I shall see fairies, 
too, hopping about in that great old hall, that looks more like 
a church, with its huge pillars, than anything else." 

"Yes," said Emily, smiling, and glad to escape from more se- 
rious thought. " If we come to the corridor about midnight, and 
look down into the hall, we shall certainly see it illuminated with 
a thousand lamps, and the fairies tripping in gay circles to the 
sound of delicious music; for it is in such places as this, you 
know, that they come to hold their revels. But I am afraid, 
Annette, you will not be able to pay the necessary penance 
for such a sight; and if they once hear your voice, the whole 
scene will vanish in an instant." 

"Oh! if you will bear me company, ma'amselle, I will come 
to the corridor this very night, and I promise you I will hold 
my tongue; it shall not be my fault if the show vanishes. But 
do you think they will come? " 



THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO 68i 

"I cannot promise that with certainty, but I will venture 
to say it will not be your fault if the enchantment should 
vanish." 

"Well, ma'amselle, that is saying more than I expected of 
you; but I am not so much afraid of fairies as of ghosts, and they 
say there are plentiful many of them about the castle. Now I 
should be frightened to death if I should chance to see any of 
them. But hush! ma'amselle, — walk softly! I have thought, 
several times, something passed by me!" 

" Ridiculous ! " said Emily. "You must not indulge such fan- 
cies." 

"Oh, ma'am, they are not fancies, for aught I know. Bene- 
detto says these dismal galleries and halls are fit for nothing but 
ghosts to hve in; and I verily believe if I live long in them, I 
shall turn to one myself!" 

"I hope," said Emily, "you will not suffer Signor Montoni 
to hear of these weak fears; they would highly displease 
him." 

"What! you know, then, ma'amselle, all about it!" rejoined 
Annette. "No, no, I do know better than to do so; though if the 
signor can sleep sound, nobody else in the castle has any right to 
lay awake, I am sure." 

Emily did not appear to notice this remark. 

"Down this passage, ma'amselle; this leads to a back stair- 
case. Oh, 'if I see anything I shall be frightened out of my 
wits!" 

"That will scarcely be possible," said Emily, smiling, as she 
followed the winding of the passage, which opened into another 
gallery. 

And then Annette, perceiving that she had missed her way 
while she had been so eloquently haranguing on ghosts and 
fairies, wandered about through other passages and galleries, 
till at length, frightened by their intricacies and desolation, she 
called aloud for assistance. But they were beyond the hearing 
of the servants, who were on the other side of the castle; and 
Emily now opened the door of a chamber on the left. 

"Oh, do not go in there, ma'amselle," said Annette. "You 
will only lose yourself farther." 

"Bring the light forward," said Emily; "we may possibly find 
our way through these rooms." 



682 ANN RADCLIFFE 

Annette stood at the door, in an attitude of hesitation, with 
the light held up to show the chamber; but the feeble ray spread 
through not half of it. 

"Why do you hesitate?" said Emily. "Let me see whither 
this room leads." 

Annette advanced reluctantly. It opened into a suite of spa- 
cious and ancient apartments, some of which were hung with 
tapestry, and others wainscoted with cedar and black larch- 
wood. What furniture there was seemed to be almost as old 
as the rooms, and retained an appearance of grandeur though 
covered with dust, and dropping to pieces with the damps and 
with age. 

"How cold these rooms are, ma'amselle!" said Annette. 
"Nobody has hved in them for many, many years, they say. 
Do let us go." 

"They may open upon the great staircase, perhaps," said 
Emily, passing on till she came to a chamber hung with pic- 
tures, and took the light to examine that of a soldier on horse- 
back in a field of battle. He was darting his spear upon a man 
who lay under the feet of the horse, and who held up one hand 
in a supplicating attitude. The soldier, whose beaver was up, 
regarded him with a look of vengeance, and the countenance, 
with that expression, struck Emily as resembling Montoni. 
She shuddered, and turned from it, passing the light hastily 
over several other pictures, till she came to one concealed by 
a veil of black silk. The singularity of the circumstance struck 
her, and she stopped before it, wishing to remove the veil, and 
examine what could thus carefully be concealed, but somewhat 
wanting courage. 

"Holy Virgin! what can this mean?" exclaimed Annette. 
"This is surely the picture they told me of at Venice." 

"What picture?" said Emily. 

"Why, a picture — a picture," rephed Annette, hesitat- 
ingly; "but I never could make out exactly what it was 
about, either." 

"Remove the veil, Annette." 

"What! I, ma'amselle? I? Not for the world!" 

Emily, turning round, saw Annette's countenance grow pale. 
"And pray what have you heard of this picture to so terrify 
you, my good girl?" said she. 



THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO 683 

*' Nothing, ma'amselle; I have heard nothing; only let us find 
our way out." 

" Certainly; but I wish first to examine the picture. Take the 
light, Annette, while I lift the veil." 

Annette took the light, and immediately walked away with it, 
disregarding Emily's call to stay, who, not choosing to be left 
alone in the dark chamber, at length followed her. . . . 

"Hush!" said Emily, trembling. 

They listened, and, continuing to sit quite still, Emily heard 
a slow knocking against the wall. It came repeatedly. Annette 
then screamed loudly, and the chamber door slowly opened. It 
was Caterina, come to tell Annette that her lady wanted her. 
Emily, though she now perceived who it was, could not imme- 
diately overcome her terror; while Annette, half laughing, half 
crying, scolded Caterina for thus alarming them, and was also 
terrified lest what she had told had been overheard. Emily, whose 
mind was deeply impressed by the chief circumstance of An- 
nette's relation, was unwilling to be left alone, in the present 
state of her spirits; but, to avoid offending Madame Montoni, 
and betraying her own weakness, she struggled to overcome 
the illusions of fear, and dismissed Annette for the night. . . . 



MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 

THE MONK 

1795 

[This romance, the most famous of the "tales of terror," was written 
partly under the influence of Mrs. Radcliffe's Udolpho (see above) , though 
the story was taken from that of Santon Barsisa in The Guardian (No. 
148). It was published when the author was twenty years old. A prosecu- 
tion was begun, on the ground that certain passages were immoral, and in 
a second edition the author expunged them. The extract here reprinted 
is the conclusion of the tale, and exemplifies in particular both Lewis's 
fondness for the supernatural and his use of the details of physical 
horror.] 

Ambrosio, rather dead than alive, was left alone in his 
dungeon. . . . He looked forward to the morrow with despair, 
and his terrors increased with the approach of midnight. Some- 
times he was buried in gloomy silence; at others he raved with 
delirious passion, wrung his hands, and cursed the hour when 
he first beheld the light. In one of these moments his eye rested 
upon Matilda's mysterious gift. His transports of rage were in- 
stantly suspended. He looked earnestly at the book; he took it 
up, but immediately threw it from him with horror. He walked 
rapidly up and down his dungeon — then stopped, and again 
fixed his eyes on the spot where the book had fallen. He re- 
flected that here at least was a resource from the fate which he 
dreaded. He stooped, and took it up a second time. He remained 
for some time trembHng and irresolute; he longed to try the 
charm, yet feared its consequences. The recollection of his sen- 
tence at length fixed his indecision. He opened the volume; but 
his agitation was so great that he at first sought in vain for the 
page mentioned by Matilda. Ashamed of himself, he called all 
his courage to his aid. He turned to the seventh leaf; he began 
to read it aloud; but his eyes frequently wandered from the 
book, while he anxiously cast them round in search of the spirit 
whom he wished yet dreaded to behold. Still he persisted in 
his design ; and with a voice unassured, and frequent interrup- 



THE MONK 685 

tions, he contrived to finish the four first lines of the page. 
They were in a language whose import was totally unknown to 
him. 

Scarce had he pronounced the last word, when the effects of 
the charm were evident. A loud burst of thunder was heard, the 
prison shook to its very foundations, a blaze of lightning flashed 
through the cell, and in the next moment, borne upon sulphur- 
ous whirlwinds, Lucifer stood before him a second time. But he 
came not as when, at Matilda's summons, he borrowed the ser- 
aph's form to deceive Ambrosio. He appeared in all that ugli- 
ness which since his fall from heaven had been his portion. His 
blasted limbs still bore marks of the Almighty's thunder. A 
swarthy darkness spread itself over his gigantic form ; his hands 
and feet were armed with long talons. Fury glared in his eyes, 
which might have struck the bravest heart with terror. Over 
his huge shoulders waved two enormous sable wings, and his 
hair was supplied by living snakes, which twined themselves 
round his brows with frightful hissings. In one hand he held a 
roll of parchment, and in the other an iron pen. Still the light- 
ning flashed around him, and the thunder with repeated bursts 
seemed to announce the dissolution of Nature. 

Terrified at an apparition so different from what he had ex- 
pected, Ambrosio remained gazing upon the fiend, deprived of 
the power of utterance. The thunder had ceased to roll; uni- 
versal silence reigned through the dungeon. 

"For what am I summoned hither?" said the demon, in a 
voice which sulphurous fogs had damped to hoarseness. 

At the sound Nature seemed to tremble. A violent earth- 
quake rocked the ground, accompanied by afresh burst of thun- 
der, louder and more appalling than the first. 

Ambrosio was long unable to answer the demon's demand. "I 
am condemned to die," he said with a faint voice, his blood run- 
ning cold while he gazed upon his dreadful visitor. "Save me! 
bear me from hence!" 

" Shall the reward of my services be paid me? Dare you em- 
brace my cause? Will you be mine, body and soul? Are you pre- 
pared to renounce Him who made you, and Him who died for 
you? Answer but Yes, and Lucifer is your slave." 

"Will no less price content you? Can nothing satisfy you but 
my eternal ruin? Spirit, you ask too much. Yet convey me from 



686 MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 

this dungeon ! Be my servant for one hour, and I will be yours 
for a thousand years. Will not this offer sufl&ce? " 

"It will not. I must have your soul; must have it mine, and 
mine forever." 

''Insatiate demon! I will not doom myself to endless tor- 
ments. I will not give up my hopes of being one day pardoned." 

"You will not? On what chimera rest, then, your hopes? 
Short-sighted mortal! Miserable wretch! Are you not guilty? 
Are you not infamous in the eyes of men and angels? Can such 
enormous sins be forgiven? Hope you to escape my power? 
Your fate is already pronounced. The Eternal has abandoned 
you. Mine you are marked in the book of destiny, and mine you 
must and shall be." 

"Fiend, 'tis false! Infinite is the Almighty's mercy, and the 
penitent shall meet His forgiveness. My crimes are monstrous, 
but I will not despair of pardon. Haply, when they have re- 
ceived due chastisement — " 

" Chastisement? Was purgatory meant for guilt like yours? 
Hope you that your offenses shall be bought off by prayers of 
superstitious dotards and droning monks? Ambrosio ! be wise. 
Mine you must be. You are doomed to flames, but may shun 
them for the present. Sign this parchment; I will bear you from 
hence, and you may pass your remaining years in bliss and 
liberty. Enjoy your existence. Indulge in every pleasure to 
which appetite may lead you. But from the moment that it 
quits your body, remember that your soul belongs to me, and 
that I will not be defrauded of my right." 

The monk was silent, but his looks declared that the tempter's 
words were not thrown away. He reflected on the conditions 
proposed with horror. On the other hand, he believed himself 
doomed to perdition, and that, by refusing the demon's succor, 
he only hastened tortures which he could never escape. The 
fiend saw that his resolution was shaken. He renewed his in- 
stances, and endeavored to fix the abbot's indecision. He de- 
scribed the agonies of death in the most terrific colors, and he 
worked so powerfully upon Ambrosio's despair and fears that he 
prevailed upon him to receive the parchment. He then struck 
the iron pen which he held into a vein of the monk's left hand. 
It pierced deep, and was instantly filled with blood; yet Ambro- 
sio felt no pain from the wound. The pen was put into his hand; 



THE MONK 687 

it trembled. The wretch placed the parchment on the table be- 
fore him, and prepared to sign it. Suddenly he held his hand; 
he started away hastily, and threw the pen upon the table. 

" What am I doing? " he cried. Then, turning to the fiend with 
a desperate air, "Leave me! Begone! I will not sign the parch- 
ment." 

"Fool!" exclaimed the disappointed demon, darting looks so 
furious as penetrated the friar's soul with horror. "Thus am I 
trifled with? Go, then! Rave in agony, expire in tortures, and 
then learn the extent of the Eternal's mercy! But beware how 
you make me again your mock ! Call me no more, till resolved to 
accept my offers. Summon me a second time to dismiss me thus 
idly, and these talons shall rend you into a thousand pieces. 
Speak yet again: will you sign the parchment?" 

"I will not. Leave me! Away!" 

Instantly the thunder was heard to roll horribly; once more 
the earth trembled with violence; the dungeon resounded with 
loud shrieks, and the demon fled with blasphemy and curses. 

At first the monk rejoiced at having resisted the seducer's arts, 
and obtained a triumph over mankind's enemy; but as the hour 
of punishment drew near, his former terrors revived in his heart. 
Their momentary repose seemed to have given them fresh vigor. 
The nearer that the time approached, the more did he dread 
appearing before the throne of God. He shuddered to think how 
soon he must be plunged into eternity — how soon meet the 
eyes of his Creator, whom he had so grievously offended. The 
bell announced midnight. As he listened for the first stroke, the 
blood ceased to circulate in the abbot's veins. He heard death 
and torture murmured in each succeeding sound. He expected 
to see the archers entering his prison; and, as the bell forbore to 
toll, he seized the magic volume in a fit of despair. He opened 
it, turned hastily to the seventh page, and, as if fearing to al- 
low himself a moment's thought, ran over the fatal fines with 
rapidity. 

Accompanied by his former terrors, Lucifer again stood before 
the trembler. 

"You have summoned me," said the fiend. "Are you deter- 
mined to be wise? Will you accept my conditions? You know 
them already. Renounce your claim to salvation, make over to 
me your soul, and I bear you from this dungeon instantly. Yet 



688 MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 

IS it time. Resolve, or it will be too late. Will you sign the 
parchment?" 

"I must — Fate urges me — I accept your conditions." 

" Sign the parchment," replied the demon, in an exulting tone. 

The contract and the bloody pen still lay upon the table. Am- 
brosio drew near it. He prepared to sign his name. A moment's 
reflection made him hesitate. 

"Hark!" cried the tempter. "They come. Be quick! Sign 
the parchment, and I bear you from hence this moment." 

In effect, the archers were heard approaching, appointed to 
lead Ambrosio to the stake. The sound encouraged the monk in 
his resolution. 

"What is the import of this writing?" said he. 

" It makes your soul over to me forever, and without reserve." 

"What am I to receive in exchange?" 

"My protection, and release from this dungeon. Sign it, and 
this instant I bear you away." 

Ambrosio took up the pen. He set it to the parchment. Again 
his courage failed him. He felt a pang of terror at his heart, and 
once more threw the pen upon the table. 

"Weak and puerile!" cried the exasperated fiend. "Away 
with this folly! Sign the writing this instant, or I sacrifice you 
to my rage." 

At this moment the bolt of the outward door was drawn back. 
The prisoner heard the rattling of chains ; the heavy bar fell ; the 
archers were on the point of entering. Worked up to frenzy by 
the urgent danger, shrinking from the approach of death, terri- 
fied by the demon's threats, and seeing no other means to escape 
destruction, the wretched monk complied. He signed the fatal 
contract, and gave it hastily into the evil spirit's hands, whose 
eyes, as he received the gift, glared with malicious rapture. 

"Take it!" said the God-abandoned. "Now then save me! 
Snatch me from hence!" 

"Hold! Do you freely and absolutely renounce your Creator 
and His Son?" 

"I do! I do!" 

" Do you make over your soul to me forever? " 

"Forever!" 

"Without reserve or subterfuge? without future appeal to 
the divine mercy?" 



THE MONK 689 

The last chain fell from the door of the prison. The key was 
heard turning in the lock. Already the iron door grated heavily 
upon its rusty hinges — 

"I am yours forever, and irrevocably!" cried the monk, wild 
with terror. "I abandon all claim to salvation. I own no power 
but yours. Hark! hark! they come! Oh, save me! bear me 
away! " 

"I have triumphed! You are mine past reprieve, and I fulfill 
my promise." 

While he spoke,* the door unclosed. Instantly the demon 
grasped one of Ambrosio's arms, spread his broad pinions, and 
sprang with him into the air. The roof opened as they soared 
upwards, and closed again when they had quitted the dun- 
geon. . . . 

Though rescued from the Inquisition, Ambrosio as yet was 
insensible of the blessings of Hberty. The damning contract 
weighed heavy upon his mind ; and the scenes in which he had 
been a principal actor had left behind them such impressions as 
rendered his heart the seat of anarchy and confusion. The ob- 
jects now before his eyes, and which the full moon sailing through 
clouds permitted him to examine, were ill calculated to inspire 
that calm of which he stood so much in need. The disorder of 
his imagination was increased by the wildness of the surround- 
ing scenery; by the gloomy caverns and steep rocks, rising above 
each other, and dividing the passing clouds; soHtary clusters of 
trees scattered here and there, among whose thick-twined 
branches the wind of night sighed hoarsely and mournfully; the 
shrill cry of mountain eagles, who had built their nests among 
these lonely deserts; the stunning roar of torrents, as swelled by 
late rains they rushed violently down tremendous precipices; 
and the dark waters of a silent sluggish stream, which faintly 
reflected the moonbeams, and bathed the rock's base on which 
Ambrosio stood. The abbot cast round him a look of terror. 
His infernal conductor was still by his side, and eyed him with 
a look of mingled mahce, exultation, and contempt. . . . Am- 
brosio could not sustain his glance. He turned away his eyes, 
while thus spoke the demon: 

"I have him then in my power! This model of piety 1 This be- 
ing without reproach ! This mortal who placed his puny virtues 
on a level with those of angels. He is mine! irrevocably, eter- 



690 MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 

nally mine ! Companions of my sufferings ! denizens of hell ! how 
grateful will be my present! ... I burn to possess my right, 
and alive you quit not these mountains." 

During the demon's speech Ambrosio had been stupefied by 
terror and surprise. This last declaration aroused him. 

"Not quit these mountains alive!" he exclaimed. "Perfidi- 
ous, what mean you? Have you forgotten our contract? " 

The fiend answered by a malicious laugh. 

" Our contract? Have I not performed my part? What more 
did I promise than to save you from your prison? Have I not 
done so? Are you not safe from the Inquisition — safe from all 
but me? Fool that you were to confide yourself to a devil ! Why 
did you not stipulate for life, and power, and pleasure? Then 
all would have been granted ; now your reflections come too 
late. Miscreant, prepare for death ; you have not many hours 
to live!" 

On hearing this sentence, dreadful were the feelings of the 
devoted wretch ! He sank upon his knees, and raised his hands 
toward heaven. The fiend read his intention, and prevented it. 

"What!" he cried, darting at him a look of fury. "Dare you 
still implore the Eternal's mercy? Would you feign penitence, 
and again act an hypocrite's part? Villain, resign your hopes of 
pardon. Thus I secure my prey!" 

As he said this, darting his talons into the monk's shaven 
crown, he sprang with him from the rock. The caves and moun- 
tains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks. The demon continued to 
soar aloft, till, reaching a dreadful height, he released the suf- 
ferer. Headlong fell the monk through the airy waste. The 
sharp point of a rock received him, and he rolled from preci- 
pice to precipice, till, bruised and mangled, he rested on the 
river's banks. Instantly a violent storm arose ; the winds in fury 
rent up rocks and forests; the sky was now black with clouds, 
now sheeted with fire; the rain fell in torrents; it swelled the 
stream; the waves overflowed their banks. They reached the 
spot where Ambrosio lay, and, when they abated, carried with 
them into the river the corse of the despairing monk. 



THE ANTI-JACOBIN 

1798 

[This periodical, a protest against "the spirit of 1789," appeared weekly 
from September, 1797, to July, 1798. The chief contributors were George 
Canning, then under-secretary of state, and Hookham Frere; to Canning 
most of the successful satirical articles are attributed. (This weekly Anti- 
Jacobin must not be confused with a monthly which adopted its name 
after it had ceased to appear, and ran till 1821.) The Rovers, the drama 
described in the following extracts (of which Acts i, il, and iv were printed 
in full) is at once a burlesque of the radical philosophy of the school of 
Godwin, and of the sentimentalism and doubtful ethics of the new German 
romantic drama, which at this period was influential in England. In partic- 
ular, Goethe's Stella, Schiller's The Robbers, and Kotzebue's The Stranger 
are ridiculed by imitations of detail. The extracts are from Numbers xxx 
and XXXI.] 

Our ingenious correspondent, Mr. Higgins, has not been idle. 
The deserved popularity of the extracts which we have been en- 
abled to give from his two didactic poems, The Progress of Man 
and The Loves of the Triangles, has obtained for us the conrmuni- 
cation of several other works which he has in hand, all framed 
upon the same principle and directed to the same end. The pro- 
pagation of the "new system of philosophy" forms, as he has 
himself candidly avowed to us, the main object of all his writ- 
ings. A system comprehending not politics only, and religion, 
but morals and manners, and generally whatever goes to the 
composition or holding together of human society ; in all of which 
a total change and revolution is absolutely necessary (as he con- 
tends) for the advancement of our common nature to its true 
dignity, and to the summit of that perfection which the com- 
bination of matter called Man is by its innate energies capable 
of attaining. 

Of this system, while the sublimer and more scientific branches 
are to be taught by the splendid and striking medium of didactic 
poetry, or ratiocination in rhyme, illustrated with such paint- 
ings and portraitures of essences and their attributes as may lay 
hold of the imagination while they perplex the judgment, the 
more ordinary parts, such as relate to the conduct of common 



692 THE ANTI-JACOBIN 

life, and the regulation of the social feelings, are naturally the 
subject of a less elevated style of writing, — of a style which 
speaks to the eye as well as to the ear, — in short, of dramatic 
poetry and scenic representation. 

"With this view," says Mr. Higgins (for we love to quote the 
very words of this extraordinary and indefatigable writer), in 
a letter dated from his study in St. Mary Axe, the window of 
which looks upon the parish pump, — "with this view I have 
turned my thoughts more particularly to the German stage, and 
have composed, in imitation of the most popular pieces of that 
country, which have already met with so general reception and 
admiration in this, a play ; which, if it has a proper run, will, I 
think, do much to unhinge the present notions of men with re- 
gard to the obligations of civil society, and to substitute, in lieu 
of a sober contentment and regular discharge of the duties in- 
cident to each man's particular situation, a wild desire of unde- 
finable latitude and extravagance ; an aspiration after shapeless 
somethings, that can neither be described nor understood, — a 
contemptuous disgust at all that is, and a persuasion that no- 
thing is as it ought to be; — to operate, in short, a general dis- 
charge of every man (in his own estimation) from everything 
that laws, divine or human, that local customs, immemorial 
habits, and multiplied examples, impose upon him; and to set 
them about doing what they like, where they like, when they 
like, and how they like, without reference to any law but their 
own will, or to any consideration of how others may be affected 
by their conduct. 

"When this is done, my dear sir," continues Mr. H. (for he 
writes very confidentially), "you see that a great step is gained 
towards the dissolution of the frame of every existing commu- 
nity. I say nothing of governments, as their fall is of course im- 
plicated in that of the social system, and you have long known 
that I hold every government (that acts by coercion and restric- 
tion — by laws made by the few to bind the many) as a malum 
in se, — an evil to be eradicated, a nuisance to be abated, by 
force, if force be practicable, — if not, by the artillery of rea- 
son, — by pamphlets, speeches, toasts at club dinners, and — 
though last, not least — didactic poems. 

"But where would be the advantage of the destruction of this 
or that government, if the form of society itself were to be suf- 



THE ANTI-JACOBIN 693 

fered to continue such as that another must necessarily arise out 
of it, and over it? Society, my dear sir, in its present state, is a 
hydra. Cut off one head, — another presently sprouts out, and 
your labor is to begin again. At best, you can only hope to find 
it a polypus, — where, by cutting off the head, you are some- 
times fortunate enough to find a tail (which answers all the same 
purposes) spring up in its place. This, we know, has been the 
case in France, — the only country in which the great experi- 
ment of regeneration has been tried with anything Uke a fair 
chance of success. 

'' Destroy the frame of society, — decompose its parts, — and 
set the elements fighting one against another, insulated and in- 
dividual, every man for himself (stripped of prejudice, of big- 
otry, and of feeling for others) against the remainder of his 
species, — and there is then some hope of a totally new order 
of things, — of a radical reform in the present corrupt system of, 
the world. 

"The German theatre appears to proceed on this judicious 
plan. And I have endeavored to contribute my mite towards 
extending its effect and its popularity. There is one obvious ad- 
vantage attending this mode of teaching, — that it can propor- 
tion the infractions of law, religion, and morality, which it re- 
commends, to the capacity of a reader or spectator. If you tell 
a student, or an apprentice, or a merchant's clerk, of the virtue 
of a Brutus, of the splendor of a Lafayette, you may excite his 
desire to be equally conspicuous; but how is he to set about it? 
Where is he to find the tyrant to murder? How is he to provide 
the monarch to be imprisoned, and the national guards to be 
reviewed on a white horse? But paint the beauties of forgery to 
him in glowing colors, — show him that the presumption of vir- 
tue is in favor of rapine, and occasional murder on the highway, 

— and he presently understands you. The highway is at hand 

— the till or the counter is within reach. These haberdashers' 
heroics 'come home to the business and the bosoms of men.' 
And you may readily make ten footpads, where you would not 
have materials nor opportunity for a single tyrannicide. 

"The subject of the piece which I herewith transmit to you, 
is taken from common or middhng life; and its merit is that of 
teaching the most lofty truths in the most humble style, and de- 
ducing them from the most ordinary occurrences. Its moral is 



694 THE ANTI-JACOBIN 

obvious and easy, and is one frequently inculcated by the Ger- 
man dramas which I have had the good fortune to see; beingno 
other than ' the reciprocal duties of one or more husbands to one 
or more wives,' and 'to the children who may happen to arise 
out of this complicated and endearing connection.' The plot, 
indeed, is formed by the combination of the plots of two of the 
most popular of these plays (in the same way as Terence was 
wont to combine two stories of Menander's). The characters 
are such as the admirers of these plays will recognize for their 
familiar acquaintances. There are the usual ingredients of im- 
prisonments, post-houses and horns, and appeals to angels and 
devils. I have omitted only the swearing, to which English ears 
are not yet sufficiently accustomed." . . . 

PLOT 

Rogero, son of the late minister of the Count of Saxe-Weimar, having, 
while he was at college, fallen desperately in love with Matilda Pottingen, 
daughter of his tutor, Doctor Engelbertus Pottingen, Professor of Civil 
Law, and Matilda evidently returning his passion,- the Doctor, to prevent 
ill consequences, sends his daughter on a visit to her aunt in Wetteravia, 
where she becomes acquainted with Casimere, a Polish officer, who hap- 
pens to be quartered near her aunt's, and has several children by him. 

Roderic, Count of Saxe-Weimar, a prince of a tyrannical and hcentious 
disposition, has for his Prime Minister and favorite, Caspar, a crafty vil- 
lain, who has risen to his post by first ruining and then putting to death 
Rogero's father. Caspar, apprehensive of the power and popularity which 
the young Rogero may enjoy at his return to court, seizes the occasion of 
his intrigue with Matilda (of which he is apprised officially by Doctor 
Pottingen) to procure from his master an order for the recall of Rogero 
from college, and for committing him to the care of the Prior of the Abbey 
of Quedlinburgh, a priest rapacious, savage, and sensual, and devoted to 
Caspar's interests, — sending at the same time private orders to the 
Prior to confine him in a dungeon. 

Here Rogero languishes many years. His daily sustenance is adminis- 
tered to him through a grated opening at the top of the cavern, by the 
landlady of the Colden Eagle at Weimar, with whom Caspar contracts, in 
the Prince's name, for his supper, — intending, and more than once en- 
deavoring, to corrupt the waiter to mingle poison with the food, in order 
that he may get rid of Rogero forever. 

In the mean time Casimere, having been called away from the neigh- 
borhood of Matilda's residence to other quarters, becomes enamored of, 
and marries Cecilia, by whom he has a family, and whom he hkewise de- 
serts after a few years, on pretence of business which calls him to Kam- 
schatka. 

Doctor Pottingen, now grown old and infirm, and feeling the want of 



THE ANTI-JACOBIN 695 

his daughter's society, sends young Pottingen in search of her, with strict 
injunctions not to return without her, and to bring with her either her 
present lover Casimere, or — should that not be possible — Rogero him- 
self, if he can find him; the Doctor having set his heart upon seeing his 
children comfortably settled before his death. Matilda, about the same 
period, quits her aunt's in search of Casimere; and Cecilia, having been 
advertised — by an anonymous letter — of the falsehood of his Kam- 
schatkan journey, sets out in the post-wagon on a similar pursuit. 

It is at this point of time the play opens, with the accidental meeting of 
Cecilia and Matilda at the inn at Weimar. Casimere arrives there soon 
after, and falls in first with Matilda, and then with Ceciha. Successive 
eclaircissements take place, and an arrangement is finally made by which 
the two ladies are to live jointly with Casimere. 

Young Pottingen, wearied with a few weeks' search, during which he 
has not been able to find either of the objects of it, resolves to stop at 
Weimar and wait events there. It so happens that he takes up his lodging 
in the same house with Puddincrantz and Beefinstern, two English noble- 
men, whom the tyranny of King John has obliged to fly from their coun- 
try, and who, after wandering about the continent for some time, have 
fixed their residence at Weimar. 

The news of the signature of Magna Charta arriving, determines Pud- 
dincrantz and Beefinstern to return to England. Young Pottingen opens 
his case to them, and entreats them to stay to assist him in the object of 
his search. This they refuse; but, coming to the inn where they are to set 
off for Hamburg, they meet Casimere, from whom they had both received 
many civilities in Poland. 

Casimere, by this time, tired of his "Double Arrangement," and having 
learnt from the waiter that Rogero is confined in the vaults of the neigh- 
boring Abbey for love, he resolves to attempt his rescue, and to make over 
Matilda to him as the price of his dehverance. He communicates his 
scheme to Puddingfield and Beefington, who agree to assist him; as also 
does young Pottingen. The waiter of the inn, proving to be a Knight 
Templar in disguise, is appointed leader of the expedition. A band of 
troubadours, who happen to be returning from the Crusades, and a com- 
pany of Austrian and Prussian grenadiers returning from the Seven Years' 
War, are engaged as troops. 

The attack on the Abbey is made with great success. The Count of 
Weimar and Caspar, who are feasting with the Prior, are seized and be- 
headed in the refectory. The Prior is thrown into the dungeon from which 
Rogero is rescued. Matilda and Cecilia rush in. The former recognizes 
Rogero, and agrees to live with him. The children are produced on all 
sides, and young Pottingen is commissioned to write to his father, the 
Doctor, to detail the joyful events which have taken place, and to invite 
him to Weimar to partake of the general felicity. 



APPENDIX 
THE POEMS OF OSSIAN 

TRANSLATED BY 

JAMES MACPHERSON 
1760, 1762 

[The Ossianic "poems" are represented in an Appendix, as not being 
strictly a part of either the prose or the poetry of the eighteenth century. 
They were pubHshed by Macpherson as translations: first, Fragments of 
Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands, in 1760; then Fingal,an ancient 
epic poem in six books, together with several other poems composed by Ossian, 
the son of Fingal, in 1762; lastly Temora, another epic, in 1763. Their gen- 
uineness was early suspected (see the extracts above from Gray's Letters, 
page T)2?>, and Boswell's Johnson, page 643), and the exact character of 
the writings has never been determined with precision. It is now gener- 
ally agreed, however, that while Macpherson found his materials in Gaelic 
hterature the arrangement and style of his " translations " were largely his 
own. The following extracts include the close of Car than (including the 
famous "Hymn to the Sun"), the opening of Book I of Fingal, and the 
greater portion of The Death of Cuthullin.] 

CARTHON 

... Fingal was sad for Carthon; he commanded his bards to mark 
the day, when shadowy autumn returned; and often did they mark 
the day and sing the hero's praise. " Who comes so dark from ocean's 
roar, like autumn's shadowy cloud? Death is trembling in his hand! 
his eyes are flames of fire! Who roars along dark Lora's heath? Who 
but Carthon, king of swords! The people fall! See how he strides, 
like the sullen ghost of Morven ! But there he lies, a goodly oak which 
sudden blasts overturned! When shalt thou rise, Balclutha's joy? 
When, Carthon, shalt thou arise? Who comes so dark from ocean's 
roar, like autumn's shadowy cloud?" 

Such were the words of the bards, in the day of their mourning. 
Ossian often joined their voice, and added to their song. " My soul 
has been mournful for Carthon; he fell in the days of his youth. And 
thou, O Clessammor! where is thy dwelling in the wind? Has the 
youth forgot his wound? Flies he on clouds wdth thee? I feel the sun, 
O Malvina! Leave me to my rest. Perhaps they may come to my 
dreams; I think I hear a feeble voice. The beam of heaven delights 
to shine on the grave of Carthon ; I feel it warm around ! thou that 



698 JAMES MACPHERSON 

roUest above, round as the shield of my fathers ! Whence are thy 
beams, O sun ! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful 
beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, 
sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself mo vest alone; who can 
be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall ; the 
mountains themselves decay with years ; the ocean shrinks, and grows 
again; the moon herself is lost in heaven. But thou art forever the 
same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is 
dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou look- 
est in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to 
Ossian thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more, 
whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou trem- 
blest at the gates of the West. But thou art, perhaps, Hke me, for a 
season ; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in the clouds, 
careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, sun, in the 
strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glim- 
mering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and 
the mist is on the hills; the blast of the North is on the plain; the 
traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey." 

TINGAL 

Cuthullin sat by Tura's wall, by the tree of the rustling sound. His 
spear leaned against a rock. His shield lay on grass by his side. Amid 
his thoughts of mighty Carbar, a hero slain by the chief in war, the 
scout of ocean comes, Moran the son of Fithil. 

"Arise! " says the youth. " Cuthullin, arise! I see the ships of the 
North! Many, chief of men, are the foe. Many are the heroes of the 
sea-born Swaran!" 

"Moran," replied the blue-eyed chief, "thou ever tremblest, son 
of Fithil ! Thy fears have increased the foe. It is Fingal, king of des- 
erts, with aid to green Erin of streams." 

" I beheld their chief," says Moran, " tall as a gUttering rock. His 
spear is a blasted pine; his shield the rising moon. He sat on the 
shore! like a cloud of mist on the silent hill! Many, chief of heroes! 
I said, many are our hands of war. Well art thou named the 
Mighty Man, but many mighty men are seen from Tura's windy 
walls. 

"He spoke, like a wave on a rock: Who in this land appears like 
me ? Heroes stand not in my presence; they fall to earth from my 
hand. Who can meet Swaran in fight ? Who but Fingal, king of 
Selma of storms? Once we wrestled on Malmor ; our heels overturned 
the woods. Rocks fell from their place; rivulets, changing their 
course, fled murmuring from our side. Three days we renewed the 
strife; heroes stood at a distance, and trembled. On the fourth, Fin- 
gal says that the king of the ocean fell ; but Swaran says he stood. 
Let dark Cuthullin yield to him that is strong as the storms of this 
land!" 



POEMS OF OSSIAN 699 

"No!" replied the blue-eyed chief, "I never yield to mortal man! 
Dark Cuthullin shall be great or dead! Go, son of Fithil, take my 
spear. Strike the sounding shield of Semo. It hangs at Tura's rust- 
ling gate. The sound of peace is not in its voice ! My heroes shall 
hear and obey." 

He went. He struck the bossy shield. The hills, the rocks reply. 
The sound spreads along the wood; deer start by the lake of roes. 
Curach leaps from the sounding rock, and Connal of the bloody spear. 
Crugal's breast of snow beats high. The son of Favi leaves the dark- 
brown hind. "It is the shield of war," said Ronnor! "The spear of 
Cuthullin," said Lugar! Son of the sea, put on thy arms! Calmar, 
lift thy sounding steel ! Puno ! dreadful hero, arise ! Cairbar, from thy 
red tree of Cromla! Bend thy knee, O Eth! descend from the streams 
of Lena. Ca-olt, stretch thy side as thou movest along the whistling 
heath of Mora ; thy side that is white as the foam of the troubled sea, 
when the dark winds pour it on rocky Cuthon. 

Now I behold the chiefs in the pride of their former deeds ! Their 
souls are kindled at the battles of old, at the actions of other times. 
Their eyes are flames of fire. They roll in search of the foes of the 
land. Their mighty hands are on their swords. Lightning pours from 
their sides of steel. They come like streams from the mountains; 
each rushes roaring from his hill. Bright are the chiefs of battle, in 
the armor of their fathers. Gloomy and dark their heroes follow, like 
the gathering of the rainy clouds behind the red meteors of heaven. 
The sounds of crashing arms ascend. The gray dogs howl between. 
Unequal bursts the song of battle. Rocky Cromla echoes round. On 
Lena's dusky heath they stand, like mist that shades the hills of au- 
tumn; when broken and dark it settles high, and lifts its head to hea- 
ven. 

"Hail!" said Cuthullin, "sons of the narrow vales! Hail, hunters 
of the deer! Another sport is drawing near; it is like the dark rolling 
of that wave on the coast. Or shall we fight, ye sons of war, or yield 
green Erin to Lochlin? O Connal, speak, thou first of men! thou 
breaker of the shields! Thou hast often fought with Lochlin; wilt 
thou lift thy father's spear?" 

"Cuthullin," calm the chief replied, "the spear of Connal is keen. 
It delights to shine in battle, to mix with the blood of thousands. 
But though my hand is bent on fight, my heart is for the peace of Erin. 
Behold, thou first in Cormac's war, the sable fleet of Swaran. His 
masts are many on our coast, like reeds in the Lake of Lego. His 
ships are forests clothed with mist, when the trees yield by turns to 
the squally wind. Many are his chiefs in battle. Connal is for peace ! 
Fingal would shun his arm, the first of mortal men ! Fingal, who scat- 
ters the mighty, as stormy winds the heath, when streams roar 
through echoing Cona, and night settles with all her clouds on the 
hill." 

"Fly, thou man of peace!" said Calmar. "Fly!" said the son of 
Matha. "Go, Connal, to thy silent hills, where the spear never 



700 JAMES MACPHERSON 

brightens in war! Pursue the dark-brown deer of Cromla: stop with 
thine arrows the bounding roes of Lena. But, blue-eyed son of Semo, 
Cuthullin, ruler of the field, scatter thou the sons of Lochlin! roar 
through the ranks of their pride. Let no vessel of the kingdom of 
Snow bound on the dark-rolling waves of Inistore. Rise, ye dark 
winds of Erin, rise ! Roar, whirlwind of Lara of hinds ! Amid the tem- 
pest let me die, torn, in a cloud, by angry ghosts of men; amid the 
tempest let Calmar die, if ever chase was sport to him, so much as 
the battle of shields!" 

" Calmar," Connal slow replied, " I never fled, young son of Matha ! 
I was swift with my friends in fight; but small is the fame of Connal. 
The battle was won in my presence; the valiant overcame! But, son 
of Semo, hear my voice; regard the ancient throne of Cormac. Give 
wealth and half the land for peace, till Fingal shall arrive on our 
coast. Or, if war be thy choice, I lift the sword and spear. My joy 
shall be in the midst of thousands; my sword shall lighten through 
the gloom of the fight!" 

"To me," Cuthullin replies, "pleasant is the noise of arms! pleas- 
ant as the thunder of heaven before the shower of spring ! But gather 
all the shining tribes, that I may view the sons of war. Let them 
pass along the heath, bright as the sunshine before a storm, when the 
west wind collects the clouds, and Morven echoes over all her oaks! 
But where are my friends in battle? The supporters of my arm in 
danger? Where art thou, white-bosomed Cathba? Where is that 
cloud in war, Duchomar? Hast thou left me, O Fergus! in the day of 
the storm? Fergus, first in our joy at the feast ! son of Rossa ! arm of 
death! comest thou like a roe from Malmor? Like a hart from thy 
echoing hills? Hail, thou son of Rossa! what shades the soul of 
war?" 

"Four stones," replied the chief, " rise on the grave of Cathba. 
These hands have laid in earth Duchomar, that cloud in war. 
Cathba, son of Torman! thou wert a sunbeam in Erin. And thou, 
valiant Duchomar! a mist of the marshy Lano, when it moves on 
the plains of autumn, bearing the death of thousands along. Morna, 
fairest of maids! calm is thy sleep in the cave of the rock. Thou hast 
fallen in darkness, like a star that shoots across the desert, when the 
traveler is alone and mourns the transient beam." 

"Say," said Seno's blue-eyed son, "say how fell the chiefs of Erin? 
Fell they by the sons of Lochlin, striving in the battle of heroes? Or 
what confines the strong in arms to the dark and narrow house? " 

" Cathba," replied the hero, " fell by the sword of Duchomar at the 
oak of the noisy streams. Duchomar came to Tura's cave; he spoke 
to the lovely Morna. ' Morna, fairest among women, lovely daughter 
of strong-armed Cormac ! Why in the circle of stones, in the cave of 
the rock alone? The stream murmurs along. The old tree groans in 
the wind. The lake is troubled before thee; dark are the clouds of the 
sky! But thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, 
when it curls on the hill ; when it shines to the beam of the West ! Thy 



POEMS OF OSSIAN 701 

breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams; thy arms 
like two white pillars in the halls of the great Fingal.' 

'"From whence,' the fair-haired maid replied, 'from whence, 
Duchomar, most gloomy of men? Dark are thy brows and terrible! 
Red are thy rolling eyes! Does Swaran appear on the sea? What of 
the foe, Duchomar? ' ' From the hill I return, O Morna, from the hill 
of the dark-brown liinds. Three have I slain with my bended yew; 
three with my long-bounding dogs of the chase. Lovely daughter of 
Cormac, I love thee as my soul ! I have slain one stately deer for thee. 
High was his branchy head, and fleet his feet of wind. ' ' Duchomar! ' 
calm the maid replied, ' I love thee not, thou gloomy man ! Hard is 
thy heart of rock; dark is thy terrible brow. But Cathba, young son 
of Torman, thou art the love of Morna. Thou art a sunbeam in the 
day of the gloomy storm. Sawest thou the son of Torman, lovely on 
the hill of his hinds? Here the daughter of Cormac waits the coming 
of Cathba.' 

" ' Long shall Morna wait,' Duchomar said, ' long shall Morna wait 
for Cathba! Behold this sword unsheathed! Here wanders the blood 
of Cathba ! Long shall Morna wait. He fell by the stream of Branno. 
On Croma will I raise his tomb, daughter of blue-shielded Cormac! 
Turn on Duchomar thine eyes; his arm is strong as a storm.' 

'"Is the son of Torman fallen?' said the wildly bursting voice of 
the maid. ' Is he fallen on his echoing hills, the youth with the breast 
of snow? the first in the chase of hinds? the foe of the strangers of 
ocean? Thou art dark to me, Duchomar! cruel is thine arm to Morna! 
Give me that sword, my foe ! I love the wandering blood of Cathba ! ' 

" He gave the sword to her tears. She pierced his manly breast ! He 
fell, like the bank of a mountain stream, and, stretching forth his hand, 
he spoke: 'Daughter of blue-shielded Cormac, thou hast slain me in 
youth! The sword is cold in my breast; Morna, I feel it cold. Give 
me to Moina the maid. Duchomar was the dream of her night! 
She will raise my tomb; the hunter shall raise my fame. But draw 
the sword from my breast. Morna, the steel is cold ! ' She came, in all 
her tears she came; she drew the sword from his breast. He pierced 
her white side! He spread her fair locks on the ground! Her burst- 
ing blood sounds from her side; her white arm is stained with red. 
Rolling in death she lay. The cave re-echoed to her sighs." 

"Peace," said Cuthullin, "to the souls of the heroes! Their deeds 
were great in fight. Let them show their features of war. My soul 
shall then be firm in danger, mine arm like the thunder of heaven. 
But be thou on a moonbeam, O Morna! near the window of my rest, 
when my thoughts are of peace, when the din of arms is past. Gather 
the strength of the tribes ! Move to the wars of Erin ! Attend the car 
of my battles! Rejoice in the noise of my course! Place three spears 
by my side; follow the bounding of my steeds! that my soul may be 
strong in my friends, when battle darkens round the beams of my 
steel!" 

As rushes a stream of foam from the dark shady deep of Cromla, 



702 JAMES MACPHERSON 

when the thunder is traveling above, and dark-brown night sits on 
half the hill; — through the breaches of the tempest look forth the 
dim faces of ghosts; — so fierce, so vast, so terrible rushed on the sons 
of Erin. The chief, like a whale of ocean, whom all his billows pursue, 
poured valor forth as a stream, rolling his might along the shore. The 
sons of Lochlin heard the noise, as the sound of a winter storm, Swa- 
ran struck his bossy shield ; he called the son of Arno. ' ' What murmur 
rolls along the hill, like the gathered flies of the eve? The sons of Erin 
descend, or rustling winds roar in the distant wood ! Such is the noise 
of Gormal, before the white tops of my waves arise." . . . 

Like autumn's dark storms, pouring from two echoing hills, towards 
each other approached the heroes. Like two deep streams from high 
rocks meeting, mixing, roaring, on the plain, loud, rough and dark 
in battle meet LochHn and Innisfail. Chief mixes his strokes with 
chief, and man with man; steel, clanging, sounds on steel. Helmets 
are cleft on high. Blood bursts and smokes around. Strings murmur 
on the polished yews. Darts rush along the sky. Spears fall like the 
circles of light which gild the face of night. As the noise of the trou- 
bled ocean, when roll the waves on high, as the last peal of thunder 
in heaven, such is the din of war! Though Cormac's hundred bards 
were there to give the fight to song, feeble was the voice of a hundred 
bards to send the deaths to future times. For many were the deaths 
of heroes; wide poured the blood of the brave! . . . 

THE DEATH OF CUTHULLIN 

. . . Cuthullin sitsatLego'slake, at thedark rolling of waters. Night 
is around the hero. His thousands spread on the heath. A hundred 
oaks burn in the midst. The feast of shells is smoking wide. Carril 
strikes the harp beneath a tree. His gray locks glitter in the beam. 
The rustling blast of night is near, and lifts his aged hair. His song 
is of the blue Togorma, and of its chief, Cuthullin's friend. " Why art 
thou absent, Connal, in the day of the gloomy storm? The chiefs of 
the South have convened against the car-borne Cormac. The winds 
detain thy sails. Thy blue waters roll around thee. But Cormac is 
not alone. The son of Semo fights his wars ! Semo's son his battles 
fights! the terror of the stranger! he that is like the vapor of death, 
slowly borne by sultry winds. The sun reddens in his presence; the 
people fall around." 

Such was the song of Carril, when a son of the foe appeared. He 
threw down his pointless spear. He spoke the words of Torlath, — 
Torlath, chief of heroes, at Lego's sable surge; he that led his thous- 
ands to battle against car-borne Cormac, Cormac who was distant far, 
inTemora's echoing halls; he learned to bend the bow of his fathers, 
and to lift the spear. Nor long didst thou lift the spear, mildly shin- 
ing beam of youth! Death stands dim behind thee, like the darkened 
half of the moon behind its growing light ! Cuthullin rose before the 
bard that came from generous Torlath. He offered him the shell of 



POEMS OF OSSIAN 703 

joy. He honored the son of songs. " Sweet voice on Lego ! " he said, 
" what are the words of Torlath? Comes he to our feast or battle, the 
car-borne son of Cantela?" 

"He comes to thy battle," replied the bard, *'to the sounding 
strife of spears. When morning is gray on Lego, Torlath will light on 
the plain. Wilt thou meet him in thine arms, king of the isle of mist? 
Terrible is the spear of Torlath! It is a meteor of night. He hfts it, 
and the people fall ! Death sits in the lightning of his sword ! " 

"Do I fear," rephed Cuthullin, "the spear of car-borne Torlath? 
He is brave as a thousand heroes, but my soul delights in war. The 
sword rests not by the side of Cuthullin, bard of the times of old! 
Morning shall meet me on the plain, and gleam on the blue arms of 
Semo's son. But^sit thou on the heath, O bard! and let us hear thy 
voice. Partake of the joyful shell, and hear the songs of Temora! " 

" This is no time," rephed the bard, " to hear the song of joy; when 
the mighty are to meet in battle, like the strength of the waves of 
Lego. Why art thou so dark, Slimora! with all thy silent woods? No 
star trembles on thy top ; no moonbeam on thy side. But the meteors 
of death are there ; the gray watery forms of ghosts. Why art thou 
dark, Slimora! with thy silent woods?" 

He retired, in the sound of his song. Carril joined his voice. The 
music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mourn- 
ful to the soul ; the ghosts of departed bards heard on Slimora's side. 
Soft sounds spread along the wood. The silent valleys of night re- 
joice. So, when he sits in the silence of the day, in the valley of his 
breeze, the humming of the mountain bee comes to Ossian's ear; the 
gale drowns it in its course, but the pleasant sound returns again. 
Slant looks the sun on the field! gradual grows the shade of the 
hill! 

"Raise," said Cuthullin to his hundred bards, "the song of the 
noble Fingal ; that song which he hears at night, when the dreams of 
his rest descend, when the bards strike the distant harp, and the 
faint light gleams on Selma's walls. Or let the grief of Lara rise; the 
sighs of the mother of Calmar, when he was sought in vain on his 
hills, when she beheld his bow in the hall. Carril, place the shield of 
Caithbat on that branch.. Let the spear of Cuthullin be near, that 
the sound of my battle may rise with the gray beam of the East." 
The hero leaned on his father's shield ; the song of Lara rose ! The 
hundred bards were distant far; Carril alone is near the chief. The 
words of the song were his; the sound of his harp was mournful. 

" Alcletha with the aged locks! mother of car-borne Calmar! why 
dost thou look toward the desert to behold the return of thy son? 
These are not his heroes, dark on the heath; nor is that the voice of 
Calmar. It is but the distant grove, Alcletha! but the roar of the 
mountain wind ! " . . . 

Such was the song of Carril, when Cuthullin lay on his shield. The 
bards rested on their harps. Sleep fell softly around. The son of Semo 
was awake alone. His soul was fixed on war. The burning oaks be- 



704 ■ JAMES MACPHERSON 

gan to decay. Faint red light is spread around. A feeble voice is 
heard. The ghost of Calmar came ! He stalked dimly along the beam. 
Dark is the wound in his side. His hair is disordered and loose. Joy 
sits pale on his face. He seems to invite Cuthullin to his cave. 

"Son of the cloudy night!" said the rising chief of Erin. "Why 
dost thou bend thy dark eyes on me, ghost of the noble Calmar? 
Wouldst thou frighten me, O Matha's son! from the battles of Cor- 
mac? Thy hand was not feeble in war, neither was thy voice for 
peace. How art thou changed, chief of Lara! if thou now dost advise 
to fly! But, Calmar, I never fled. I never feared the ghosts of night. 
Small is their knowledge, weak their hands; their dwelling is in the 
wind. But my soul grows in danger, and rejoices in the noise of steel. 
Retire thou to thy cave! Thou art not Calmar 's ghpst. He delighted 
in battle. His arm was like the thunder of heaven ! " He retired in 
his blast with joy, for he had heard the voice of his praise. 

The faint beam of the morning rose. The sound of Caithbat's 
buckler spread. Green Erin's warriors convened, like the roar of 
many streams. The horn of war is heard over Lego. The mighty 
Torlath came. "Why dost thou come with thy thousands, Cuth- 
ullin?" said the chief on Lego. "I know the strength of thy arm. 
Thy soul is an unextinguished fire. Why fight we not on the plain, 
and let our hosts behold our deeds? Let them behold us like roaring 
waves that tumble round a rock; the mariners hasten away, and look 
on their strife with fear." 

"Thou risest like the sun on my soul," replied the son of Semo. 
"Thine arm is mighty, O Torlath ! and worthy of my wrath. Retire, 
ye men of Ullin, to Slimora's shady side. Behold the chief of Erin 
in the day of his fame. Carril! tell to mighty Connal, if Cuthullin 
must fall, — tell him I accused the winds which roar on Togorma's 
waves. Never was he absent in battle, when the strife of my fame 
arose. Let his sword be before Cormac like the beam of heaven. 
Let his counsel sound inTemora, in the day of danger." 

He rushed, in the sound of his arms, like the terrible spirit of Loda, 
when he comes in the roar of a thousand storms, and scatters battles 
from his eyes. He sits on a cloud over Lochlin's seas. His mighty 
hand is on his sword. Winds lift his flaming locks ! The waning moon 
half lights his dreadful face. His features, blended in darkness, arise 
to view. So terrible was Cuthullin in the day of his fame. Torlath 
fell by his hand. His heroes mourned. They gather round the chief, 
like the clouds of the desert. A thousand swords rose at once; a thou- 
sand arrows flew; but the son of Semo stood like a rock in the midst 
of a roaring sea. They fell around. He strode in blood. Dark Slimora 
echoed wide. The sons of Ullin came. The battle spread over Lego. 
The chief of Erin overcame. He returned over the field with his fame. 
But pale he returned! The joy of his face was dark. He rolled his 
eyes in silence. The sword hung, unsheathed, in his hand. His spear 
bent at every step. 

" Carril," said the chief in secret^ " the strength of Cuthullin fails. 



POEMS OF OSSIAN , 705 

My days are with the years that are past. No morning of mine shall 
arise. They shall seek me at Temora, but I shall not be found. Cor- 
mac will weep in his hall, and say, ' Where is Erin's chief ? ' But my 
name is renowned ! my fame in the song of bards. The youth will say 
in secret, 'O let me die as CuthuUin died! Renown clothed him like a 
robe. The light of his fame is great.' Draw the arrow from my side. 
Lay Cuthullin beneath that oak. Place the shield of Cathba near, 
that they may behold me amidst the arms of my fathers! " 

" And is the son of Semo fallen? " said Carril with a sigh. " Mourn- 
ful are Tura's walls. Sorrow dwells at Dunscaith. Thy spouse is left 
alone in her youth. The son of thy love is alone! He shall come to 
Bragela, and ask her why she weeps. He shall lift his eyes to the wall, 
and see his father's sword. ' Whose sword is that? ' he will say. The 
soul of his mother is sad." . . . 

By the dark rolling waves of Lego they raised the hero's tomb. Lu- 
ath at a distance lies. The song of bards rose over the dead. 

" Blest be thy soul, son of Semo ! Thou wert mighty in battle. Thy 
strength was like the strength of a stream; thy speed like the eagle's 
wing. Thy path in battle was terrible; the steps of death were behind 
thy sword. Blest be thy soul, son of Semo, car-borne chief of Dun- 
scaith! Thou hast not fallen by the sword of the mighty, neither was 
thy blood on the spear of the brave. The arrow came, like the sting 
of death in a blast ; nor did the feeble hand which drew the bow per- 
ceive it. Peace to thy soul;inthycave, chief of the isle of mist!" . . . 



BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

NOTES 

[The outline biographies that follow are in most cases abridged from the Dic- 
tionary of National Biography. Particular references to this are to "D. N. B." 

The bibliographical notes make no pretension to completeness, but are in- 
tended to suggest texts and critical references convenient for the student. In 
addition to the books mentioned under particular authors, the following are 
of use for the whole period: Gosse's Eighteenth Century Literature; T. S. Perry's 
English LUeraturc of the Eighteenth Century; Dennis's The Age of Pope; Sec- 
combe's The Age of Johnson; Leslie Stephen's English Literature and Society in the 
Eighteenth Century and History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century; and 
Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century. 

References are not given for Cowper, Gray, and Pope, as these are more 
properly treated in the collections covering eighteenth-century poetry.] 

Joseph Addison was bom at Milston, Wiltshire, May i, 1672. He 
attended the Charterhouse School and Queen's College, Oxford 
(M. A., 1693); held a fellowship till 1711; experimented in poetical 
composition, some of his writings being included by Dryden in 
his Miscellany Poems, 1693-94; traveled on the Continent, 1699- 
1703; became Under-Secretary of State, 1705; Member of ParUa- 
ment from 1708 till his death; was the centre of the group of wits 
that frequented Button's coffee-house, an establishment founded 
by a protege of Addison's about 171 1 ; married the Countess of War- 
wick, 1 7 16; retired from government service in 17 18, with a pension 
of ^^1500; died June 17, 1719. Addison's writings include The 
Campaign, a poem on the battle of Blenheim, 1704; Remarks on 
Several Parts of Italy, 1705; Fair Rosamond, the text of an opera, 
1707; contributions to The Taller, 1709-10, The Spectator, 1711-12 
(see the note on page 141), The Guardian, 17 13, The Spectator con- 
tinued, 1714, and The Freeholder, 1716; Cato, a tragedy, 1713; The 
Drummer, a comedy (not acknowledged), 17 16; besides Latin 
poems, political pamphlets, and other periodical writings. 

Addison's Works are collected in six volumes, in both an English 
and an American edition of 1856. There are also many separate edi- 
tions of The Spectator, of which the best is that published by Dent in 
1898. This and the other periodicals with which Addison was con- 
nected are also conveniently found in Chalmers's British Essayists. 
Good selections from Addison's prose have been made byT. Arnold 
(Clarendon Press), Wendell and Greenough (Ginn and Co., Boston), 
and E. B. Reed (Holt, N. Y.). Dr. Johnson's Life of Addison is still 
standard. More recent biographies are those of Leslie Stephen in 
the D. N. B., and of W. J. Courthope in the Men of Letters series. 
For criticism, see the introductions to the three volumes of selec- 
tions mentioned above, and the three biographies; also Minto's. 



7o8 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

Manual of English Prose Literature, Other critical accounts are 
Hazlitt's (in English Comic Writers), Thackeray's (in English Hu- 
mourists), and Macaulay's. An important account of Addison's 
relation to the Hterary conditions of his time is found in Beljame's 
Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres dans le Dixhuitieme Siecle. 

George Berkeley was born in Ireland, March 12, 16S5. He 
attended Trinity College, Dublin (B. A., 1704); became a fellow; 
studied natural science and philosophy with much zeal, and pub- 
lished three works setting forth a new theory, sometimes called 
monistic idealism; became junior dean and Greek Lecturer at 
Trinity; visited England, 1713, making the acquaintance of Addison, 
Steele, and Pope; was chaplain to the ambassador to Sicily, and 
traveling tutor to a young geatleman; became Dean of Derry, 1724; 
sailed to America, 1728, remaining three years in Rhode Island; 
planned a Christian college for the Bermudas, but failed to receive 
the necessary support; became Bishop of Cloyne, 1734; retired to 
Oxford, 1752, and died there, January 14, 1753. Berkeley's chief 
writings are: Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709; Treatise 
concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 17 10; Dialogues be- 
tween Hylas and Philonous, 17 13; Alciphron, or the Minute Philoso- 
pher, 1732; The Querist, 1735-37; Siris, a Chain of Philosophical 
Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, 1744. 

The Life and Letters of Berkeley, by A. C. Eraser (Oxford, 1871), is 
the standard biography. Eraser also edited Berkeley's Works in 
1901. The Dialogues are published separately in the Bohn Library. 
On Berkeley's prose style one may profitably read the introductory 
note by Saintsbury, in Craik's English Prose, volume iv. 

Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St. John) was born at Battersea, 
October, 1678; attended Eton; led a life of much dissipation; was 
elected Member of ParHament, 1700, and became a Tory leader, 
being eventually Secretary at War and Secretary of State; was 
made Viscount Bolingbroke in 171 2; lost his office on the accession of 
George I; was impeached and attainted by the new Whig Parlia- 
ment, and fled to France, 17 14; became Secretary of State to James 
the Pretender, but was dismissed in 17 16; being pardoned in 1723, he 
returned to England, and again engaged in politics; became an inti- 
mate of the poet Pope; retired again to Erance in 1735, spending 
most of his time there till his final return to England in 1743 or 1744; 
lived in retirement till his death on December 12, 1751. Boling- 
broke's writings include many pamphlets; among the most import- 
ant of those published in his lifetime are the Letter on the Spirit of 
Patriotism and The Idea of a Patriot King, 1749; after his death ap- 
peared Letters on the Study and Use of History, The True Use of 
Retirement and Study, Reflections upon Exile, Reflections on the State 
of the Nation, Essays addressed to Alexander Pope, and others. 

There is no collected edition of Bolingbroke's works. The best 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 709 

authorities on his life and philosophy are A. Hassall's Bolingbroke, 
1889; Churton CoUins's Bolingbroke, A Historical Skidy, 1886; and 
W. Sichel's Bolingbroke and his Times, 1901-02. See also Leslie 
Stephen's article in the D, N. B., and his History of English Thought 
in the i8th Century. 

James Boswell was born on his father's estate in Scotland, in 
1740. He attended school at Edinburgh, and studied law both there 
and at Glasgow ; frequently visited London ; procured an introduc- 
tion to Dr. Johnson in 1763; traveled and studied on the Continent; 
in Italy made the acquaintance of Paoli, the Corsican patriot ; prac- 
ticed law in Scotland, always with many intervals spent at London; 
accompanied Dr. Johnson on a tour to Scotland and the Hebrides, 
1773; in the same year was elected a member of Johnson's Club; 
came to London to reside, 1789; practiced law unsuccessfully, and 
spent much time on his Life of Johnson; fell into much dissipation 
during his last years, dying May 19, 1795. Boswell's writings in- 
clude An A ccounl of Corsica . . . and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, ij6S; 
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 1786; and 
The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791; besides numerous pamphlets. 

The standard edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson is that of G. 
Birkbeck Hill, in six volumes, 1891 ; there is also a convenient edition 
in two volumes in Everyman's Library; and Henry Holt and Co. 
publish a text abridged with good judgment. The Journal of a Tour 
to the Hebrides is included in the complete editions of the Life; it is 
also published separately in the Temple Classics. For Boswell's life 
see the article by Leslie Stephen, in the D. N. B.; a Life of Boswell 
by P. Fitzgerald (1891) ; also H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters 
in the Eighteenth Century (1901). Most important of the critical 
writings on Boswell are the essays of Macaulay and Carlyle. Men- 
tion should also be made of an essay by Austin Dobson, on ''Bos- 
well's Predecessors and Editors," in his Miscellanies, 1899. 

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, in January, 1729. He at- 
tended Trinity College (B. A., 1748); came to London and studied 
law in the Middle Temple; became private secretary to Lord Rock- 
ingham, the prime minister, 1765; was Member of Parliament from 
1765 to 1794; made notable speeches on the American Revolution 
(1774-76) and on Indian affairs (1785) ; entered the ministry as Pay- 
master of the Forces, 1782; opened the case for the impeachment of 
Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, 1788; spoke against 
the French republic, 1790, and broke with Fox and his other Whig 
friends on account of his opposition to the Revolution; was pen- 
sioned by the crown on his retirement in 1794; lost his only son in the 
same year; died at his estate (Beaconsfield) July 9, 1797. Burke's 
writings include: A Vindication of Natural Society, 1756; yl Philoso- 
phical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beau- 
tiful, 1756; Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770; 



7IO BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777; Reflections on the Revolution in 
France, 1790; Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 1791 ; Letter to a 
Noble Lord, 1796; Thoughts on the Prospects of a Peace with the Regi- 
cide Directory, 1796; besides very many letters, pamphlets, and 
speeches. 

There is no standard or complete edition of Burke's works. 
Burke's Select Works, edited by E. J. Payne, in three volumes 
(Clarendon Press), is the most serviceable. A good volume of selec- 
tions is edited by Bliss Perry (Holt, N. Y.). The standard biography 
is that by John Morley, in the Men of Letters series. For interpre- 
tations of Burke's character, besides Morley's, see Payne's and 
Perry's introductions, in the volumes already cited, and Woodrow 
Wilson's essay (in his Mere Literature) on " The Interpreter of English 
Liberty." On Burke's style there is an important passage in Haz- 
litt's essay on "The Prose Style of Poets," in The Plain Speaker; see 
also an essay by Augustine Birrell in Obiter Dicta, second series, 

Frances Burney (Madame D'Arblay) was born at King's 
Lynn, June 13, 1752. She was educated at home (her father, Dr. 
Charles Burney, being a distinguished musician) ; wrote fiction and 
poetry from her childhood; published her first novel, Evelina, 
secretly in 1778, and through its success became famous, in particu- 
lar winning the friendship of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson; was 
appointed Second Keeper of the Robes to the Queen, 1786, and kept 
an important diary of her experiences at the palace; retired in 1791, 
and in 1793 married General d'Arblay, a French refugee; wrote one 
or two plays, but without success; lived in France, 1802-12, later 
returning to England, where she died on January 6, 1840. Her 
works are Evelina, i^jS; Cecilia, 1782; Camilla, 1796; The Wanderer, 
1 814; Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832; Diary and Letters, published 
1842 and 1846. 

. The best edition of Mme. d'Arblay's Diary and Letters is that edited 
by Austin Dobson (six volumes, 1904-05). Mr. Dobson has also 
written her life, under the title Fanny Burney, for the Men of Let- 
ters series. For criticism, see Macaulay's essay on Madame 
d'Arblay, and a short essay by Saintsbury, in his Essays in English 
Literature, second series. 

Lord Chesterfield (Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chester- 
field) was born in London, September 22, 1694. He studied at 
Cambridge for a year, then traveled on the continent; became Gen- 
tleman of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and entered the 
House of Commons before he was quite twenty- one; succeeded to 
the peerage, 1726; became a member of the Privy Council, 1728, 
and in the same year ambassador to the Hague; while on the Conti- 
nent became intimate with Mile, du Bouchet, by whom he had a 
son, Philip, to whom his principal correspondence was addressed; 
was dismissed from the government, 1733; later wrote pamphlets 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 711 

against the administration of Walpole, and became the leader of the 
opposition in the House of Lords; entered the Pelham ministry, 
1748, and became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1745, and Secretary 
of State, 1746; thereafter retired from office, built Chesterfield 
House, collected paintings, corresponded with men of letters, and 
gave much attention to the education of his natural son; died 
March 24, 1773. Chesterfield's writings consist largely of his letters 
and political tracts. 

Chesterfield's Letters have been edited by J. Bradshaw (three vol- 
umes, 1892) and by the Earl of Carnarvon (2d edition, 1890). There 
are many selections. The standard biography is by W. H. Craig 
(1907). For criticism, see an essay by Churton Collins in his Essays 
and Studies, and one by Paul Elmer More in Shelburne Essays, fifth 
series. 

CoLLEY CiBBER was born in London, November 6, 1671. He had 
only a free-school education; served for a time in the army; in 1690 
joined the companies of the Theatre Royal, and acted for almost the 
whole of his remaining Hfe; brought out his first play in 1696; about 
171 1 acquired a share in the management of Drury Lane Theatre; in 
1730 was appointed Poet Laureate, as a reward for Whig loyalty; 
acted only occasionally after 1733; quarreled with Pope, and dis- 
placed Theobald as the hero of The Dunciad; died December 12, 1757. 
Cibber's writings include about 30 plays, 1696-1745, some worthless 
odes, and the Apology (1740). 

The Apology has been edited by R. W. Lowe (1889). For Cibber's 
life, see the article by Joseph Knight in the D. N. B. 

Daniel Defoe (whose real name was Foe, altered by him about 
1703) was born in London, in 1660 or 166 1. He was educated at a 
Dissenters' academy, and took a course designed for the ministry, 
but about 1685 decided to go into business; in 1688 joined the army 
of King William; in 1695 was appointed to an ofiice in the revenue 
service; about 1700 became a pamphleteer in defense of various 
policies of William the Third; founded the Review of the Affairs of 
France, conducting it 1704-13; was sent to Scotland on a secret mis- 
sion for the government, 1705; wrote pamphlets on behalf of Har- 
ley's policies, against the Jacobites, etc. ; for some time contributed 
to Mist's Journal, a Jacobite organ, in such a way as to hamper the 
cause it was designed to support; in later years devoted himself to 
fiction and miscellaneous writings; died, apparently in obscurity and 
poverty, April 26, 1731. Defoe's writings, which were published 
very largely without name or under pseudonyms, have been esti- 
mated to number some 250; among the more important are the 
Essay upon Projects, 1697; The True-Born Englishman (a verse 
satire), 1701; The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 1702; Appeal to 
Honor and Justice, 17 15; Robinson Crusoe, 17 19; Moll Flanders, 
1722; Journal of the Plague Year, 1^22; Complete English Tradesman, 
1725; History of the Devil, 1726. 



712 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

There is no standard text of Defoe's works, nor any approach to a 
complete edition, though there are several collections of his fiction, 
of which the best is the Romances and Narratives, edited by G. A. 
Aitken (1895-1900). Miscellaneous writings maybe found in part 
in Morley's Earlier Life and Works of Defoe (Carisbrooke Librar}'), 
Arber's English Garner, and the Bohn Library. The standard 
biography is still (though now partly obsolete) Lee's Daniel Defoe: 
Life and recently Discovered Writings (i86g); a good shorter life is 
that by William Minto, in the Men of Letters series. No student of 
Defoe can neglect the Bibliographical Notes published by W. P. 
Trent in The Nation for June 6, July 11, and August 29, 1907. For 
criticism, besides Minto, see an essay by Leslie Stephen, on " Defoe's 
Novels," in Hours in a Library, and certain pages in Walter Raleigh's 
The English Novel. 

John Dennis was born in London in 1657. He entered Caius 
College, Cambridge (B.A., 1679); traveled on the Continent; later 
had a small government office under the patronage of the Duke of 
Marlborough; wrote for the stage, 1697-1708, with small success; 
quarreled with Pope, and wrote pamphlets against him, from 171 1; 
in later years devoted himself largely to criticism; died in poverty, 
January 6, 1734. Dennis's writings include some eight plays; The 
Impartial Critic, 1693 ; The Usefulness of theStage, 1698 ; The Advance- 
ment and Reformation of Modern Poetry, 1701 ; The Grounds of Criti- 
cism in Poetry, 1704; Letters on the Genius and Writings of Shake- 
speare, 1 711; The Stage Defended, 1726; and many pamphlets. 

Most of Dennis's writings can be found only in the (now rare) col- 
lections made during his lifetime. The Impartial Critic has been 
partly reproduced in Spingarn's Critical Essays of the i/th Century, 
and the Letters on Shakespeare in Nichol Smith's Eighteenth Century 
Essays on Shakespeare. For biography, see H. G. Paul's John 
Dennis (191 1) ; for criticism, Paul's monograph, Saintsbury's History 
of Criticism, and Lounsbury's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. 
There are also interesting references to Dennis in Dr. Johnson's 
Lives of Pope and Addison. 

Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, Somersetshire, 
April 22, 1707. He attended Eton; then went to London, and began 
to write for the stage; studied at Leyden, 1728-29; on returning to 
England, became a playwright; married in 1734, but appears to have 
led an irregular life; managed a theatre in theHaymarket, 1736-37; 
studied law in the Middle Temple, and in 1740 began to practice, but 
with little success; began his career as a novelist with a parody of 
Richardson, 1742; published journals in support of the government 
during the rebellion of 1745 and later; in 1748 was appointed Justice 
of the Peace, giving much attention to his duties, and to the prob- 
lems of crime and poverty; made a voyage to Portugal, to aid his 
failing health, 1754, and died at Lisbon on October 8. Fielding's 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 713 

works include some twenty-four plays, 1728-43; Joseph Andrews, 
1742; Miscellanies (including Jonathan Wild and many satiric 
writings), 1743; Tom Jones, 1749; Amelia, ij^i; J our nolo/ a Voyage 
to Lisbon, 1755. 

The best edition of the Works of Fielding is that in ten volumes, 
with a biographical essay by Leslie Stephen, 1882. His life was 
written by Austin Dobson for the Men of Letters series (revised edi- 
tion, 1900). For criticism, see Thackeray's English Humourists, an 
essay on " Fielding's Novels " in Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library, 
and the various histories of the novel, particularly those by Stod- 
dard and Raleigh. 

Edward Gibbon was born at Putney, April 27, 1737; attended 
Westminster School, and entered Magdalen College, Oxford, 1752, 
but left the next year on account of a conversion to Roman Cath- 
olicism; was sent by his father to Switzerland, to be educated by a 
Calvinist minister; acquired French readily, and renounced his 
Catholic faith; studied history with extraordinary thoroughness; 
returned to England, 1758, and served in the Hampshire militia, 
1759-62; made further journeys to the Continent, and at Rome, 
1764, formed the design of his history of the Roman empire; joined 
Dr. Johnson's Club, 1774; was elected Professor of History at the 
Royal Academy, 1774; Member of Parliament, 1774-83, but always 
inactive in politics ; became famous after the appearance of the first 
volume of his History, 1776, and in particular was severely attacked 
by churchmen for his chapters on the rise of Christianity; removed 
to Lausanne, 1783, to finish his book, returning to England at the 
time of its completion, 1788, but only temporarily; again returned 
to England, 1793, and died there, January 16, 1794. Gibbon's writ- 
ings include: Essai sur V Elude de la Litterature, 1761; History of the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-88; Vindication, 1779; 
Memoirs of my Life and Writings (compiled by Lord Sheffield from 
various MSS.), 1796. 

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has been 
edited with notes by Dean Milman and other scholars; the standard 
American edition is in six volumes, 1880. The Memoirs, in the form 
of their publication by Sheffield, have been edited by O. F. Emerson 
(Athenajum Press, 1898) and G. Birkbeck Hill, 1900. In 1897 John 
Murray edited and published the original MSS., under the title 
Gibbon's Autobiographies. For biography, see the article by Leslie 
Stephen in the D. N. B., and the life by J. C. Morison in the Men of 
Letters series. There is an essay on "Gibbon's Autobiography" in 
Leslie Stephen's Studies of a Biographer, volume L 

William Godwin was born at Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire, 
March 3, 1756. He attended Hoxton Academy; studied philosophy 
and theology from the standpoint of a dissenter, and preached in 
nonconformist churches, 1777-83; became a Whig of the radical 



714 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

group, an enthusiast for the French Revolution, and an atheist; 
after the pubhcation of Political Justice was the recognized repre- 
sentative of EngUsh radicaUsm on the theoretical side; later modi- 
fied his views, especially in favor of the domestic affections; in 1797 
married Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman's-rights advocate, by whom 
he had a daughter Mary, who eventually married the poet Shelley; 
in his later life was a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and was 
restored by the latter to some sort of religious faith; attempted to 
write tragedies, but without success; was in much financial difficulty 
till he obtained a sinecure office in 1833; died April 7, 1836. God- 
win's writings include: Inquiry concerning Political Justice, 1793; 
Things as they Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams, 1794; St. 
Leon, 1799; Life of Chaucer, 1803; and many miscellaneous works, 
1809-34. 

Godwin's writings have not been collected in a modern edition, 
though there are various reprints of the novels. The section of 
Political Justice on Property has been edited by H. S. Salt, and pub- 
lished under the title of Godwin's Political Justice, 1890. For bio- 
graphy, see Kegan Paul's William Godwin, his Friends and Contem- 
poraries, 1876. For criticism, see Hazhtt's Spirit of the Age, Stephen's 
History of English Thought in the i8th Century, and an essay on 
" Godwin's Novels " in Stephen's Studies of a Biographer, volume II. 

Oliver Goldsmith was bom at Pallas, a village in Ireland, No- 
vember 19, 1728. He entered Trinity College (B. A., 1749); was a 
poor student, and for a time an idler after his graduation ; studied 
medicine at Edinburgh, and later on the continent, wandering 
through various European countries; reached London in destitution, 
about 1756; became an usher in a school later did hack-work for 
Griffiths the publisher, and attempted to practice medicine, with 
small success; wrote for magazines conducted by Smollett, 1757-60, 
then for Newbery's Public Ledger; became a friend of Dr. Johnson's 
in 1 761, and was one of the original members of the Literary Club; 
acquired a reputation as a poet through The Traveler, 1764; wrote 
miscellaneous books to order for various publishers; produced 
comedies successfully in 1768 and 1773; suffered almost invariably 
from poverty, through his spendthriftiness, and was also involved in 
many journalistic quarrels; died April 4, 1774. Goldsmith's writings 
include The Bee, 1759; The Citizen of the World, 1762; The Traveler, 
1^64; Essays, 1765; The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766; The Good-Natured 
Man, 1768; The Deserted Village, 1770; History of England, 1771; 
She Stoops to Conquer, 1774; History of the Earth and Animated 
Nature, 1774; and various biographies. 

Goldsmith's Works were edited by J. W. M. Gibbs, in five vol- 
umes, 1884-86; there is also a convenient one-volume edition in the 
Globe series. The Citizen of the World and the Essays have been edited 
for the Temple Classics. There are good biographies by William 
Black, in the Men of Letters series, Austin Dobson, in the Great 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 715 

Writers series, and, more recently, F. F. Moore (19 10). See also 
Macaulay's article, originally written for the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, and DeQuincey's, in his volume of Biographies. For criticism, 
in addition to these works, see also Thackeray's Frnglish Humourists. 
There is a brief but valuable essay on The Citizen of the World in 
Dobson's Eighteenth Century Vignettes, first series. 

David Hume was born at Edinburgh, April 26 (0. S.), 1711. He 
probably entered the University of Edinburgh about 1723, but 
almost nothing is known of his education; originally intended to 
practice law, but abandoned it for Hterature and philosophy; was in 
France, 1734-37, studying and writing, and on his return to England 
published his first book, which was unsuccessful; nevertheless per- 
sisted in his philosophical writing, and with his Essays met some 
success; was accused of heresy and atheism, but never formally re- 
nounced Christianity; became secretary to General Sinclair on for- 
eignmissions, 1747-48; after 1 751 turned from philosophy to history ; 
was appointed Librarian of the Faculty of Advocates, 1752; was a 
member of the embassy to Paris, 1763-66 and 1767-68; befriended 
Rousseau, and took him to England; spent his last years quietly in 
Edinburgh, where he died August 25, 1776. Hume's works include 
the Treatise of Human Nature, 1739-40; Essays Moral and Political, 
I J 4.1-42; Philosophical Essays, i y 48; I ngiciry concerning the Princi- 
ples of Morals, 1751; History of England, 1754-61; Dialogues con- 
cerning Natural Religion, 1779. 

The standard edition of Hume's Essays is that by T. H. Green 
and T. H. Grose (revised ed., 1889). Hume's life has been written 
by T. H. Huxley for the Men of Letters series, and by H. Calderwood 
for the Famous Scots series. For criticism, see Stephen's History of 
English Thought in the iSth Century. 

Richard HuRDwas born at Congreve, Staffordshire, January 13, 
1720. He entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge (B. A., 1739), and 
went into the church; gave much time to writing on theological and 
literary subjects; was made Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1775 ; 
preceptor to the King's sons, 1776; Bishop of Worcester, 1781; 
acquired a large library; died May 28, 1808. Hurd's writings in- 
clude an edition of Horace's Ars Poetica, 1749; Discourse on Poetical 
Imitation, 1751; Moral and Political Dialogues, 1759; Letters on Chiv- 
alry and Romance, 1762; Prophecies concerning the Christian Church, 
1772. 

Hurd's Works were collected in 181 1. His Life and Writings, by 
Kilvert, appeared in i860. On the significance of the Letters on 
Chivalry and Romance, see Beers's History of Romanticism in the iSth 
Century. 

Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, September 18, 1709. 
He entered Pembroke College, Oxford, but left without a degree for 



7i6 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

lack of means; was a precocious scholar, but always in poor health; 
for a time was usher in a school ; did his first literary work on a trans- 
lation, 1735; in the same year married Mrs. Porter, with whom he 
opened a boys' school, which was a failure; went to London in 1737, 
and secured literary hack-work; was employed to report parlia- 
mentary debates for the Gentleman' s Magazine, 1741-43; began his 
plans for an edition of Shakespeare about 1745, and for a dictionary 
in 1747; his tragedy Irene wa,s produced through the friendship of 
Garrick in 1749, but without success; in 1750 founded The Rambler; 
lost his wife, 1752, and lived alone thereafter, except for dependents 
whom he befriended; obtained an M.A. from Oxford, 1755; edited 
the Literary Magazine, 1756-58; received a pension from the crown, 
1762; joined Sir Joshua Reynolds in founding the Literary Club, 
1763 or 1764; wrote political pamphlets for the Tory ministry, 
1770-75; journeyed to Scotland with Boswell in 1773; was made 
LL.D. by Oxford, 1775 ; went to Paris with his friends the Thrales in 
1775; his health failed gradually, and he died December 13, 1784. 
Johnson's works include: London (poem), 1738; Life of Savage, 1744; 
The Vanity of Human Wishes (poem), 1749; The Rambler, ij<,2; Dic- 
tionary, with a Grammar and History of the English Language, 1755; 
Idler papers, 1758-60; Rasselas, 1759; an edition of the Plays of 
Shakespeare, with preface and notes, 1765; Journey to the Western 
Isles of Scotland, 1775; Prefaces Biographical and Critical to the 
Works of the Most Eminent English Poets, 1779-81. 

Johnson's Works have been issued in various editions, but there is 
no complete critical text. His periodical writings are conveniently 
found in Chalmers's British Essayists. The Lives of the Poets have 
been edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, 1905; and there is a convenient 
edition of the Chief Lives (those of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, 
Pope, and Gray), with essays by Macaulay, Carlyle, and Matthew 
Arnold, published by Holt, N. Y. The Camelot Series includes a good 
selection of Johnson's Essays, edited by S. J. Reid. The Preface to 
Shakespeare may be found in Nichol Smith's Eighteenth Century 
Essays on Shakespeare and W. Raleigh's Johnson on Shakespeare. 
Selections from Johnson have been edited by C. G. Osgood for 
Holt's English Readings. 

The standard biography is of course Boswell's (for editions, see 
Boswell) ; there is also a brief life by Leslie Stephen in the Men of 
Letters Series (see also Stephen's article in the D. N. B.). For criti- 
cism see the essay by Macaulay, originally written for the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica; Leslie Stephen's essay on "Dr. Johnson's Writ- 
ings," in Hours in a Library; Birkbeck Hill's Dr. Johnson, his 
Friends and his Critics (187S); and Professor Raleigh's lecture on 
Samuel Johnson (1907). 

Matthew Gregory Lewis was born in London, July 9, 1775. 
He attended Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford; began 
to write fiction at the age of sixteen; traveled on the Continent, and 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 717 

met Goethe at Weimar; became a German scholar, and translated 
early works of Goethe and Schiller; made a reputation through The 
Monk, which was partly stimulated by Mrs. Radcliffe's Udolpho; 
was Member of Parliament, 1 796-1 802; made the acquaintance of 
Scott, and secured his aid as a contributor to Tales of Wonder; went 
to Jamaica, 181 5, to see an estate he had inherited, and made a code 
of laws for the welfare of his slaves; ^visited Byron and Shelley on 
the Continent; died at sea, May 14, 1S18. Lewis's works include 
Ambrosio, or The Monk, 1795; Tales of Terror, 1799; Tales of Wonder, 
1801 ; Romantic Tales, 1808; besides numerous plays and translations. 
The Monk has been reprinted in various editions ; the best is in three 
volumes, 1906. Lewis's Life and Correspondence was pubHshed 1839. 
For his connection with the fiction of the romantic movement, see 
Beers's History of Romanticism in the i8th Century. 

James Macpherson was born in Inverness-shire, Scotland, 
October 27, 1736. He studied at Aberdeen and Edinburgh; wrote 
much verse while still an undergraduate; in 1759 displayed to his 
friends fragments of Gaelic poetry which he professed to have trans- 
lated, and was advised to complete and pubHsh them; on the ap- 
pearance of the poems his veracity was attacked, and much discus- 
sion followed, especially in England; on the publication of Dr. 
Johnson's attack on the authenticity of Macpherson's publications, 
Macpherson engaged in a quarrel with him ; he denied all the impu- 
tations, but never made any serious effort to prove the true charac- 
ter of his MSS.; after 1763 abandoned his work as "translator;" 
went to Florida as secretary to the Governor, 1764; on his return did 
some work as political pamphleteer and amateur historian; was 
EngHsh agent for the Nabob of Arcot, about 1780; was Member of 
ParHament from 1780 till his death on February 17, 1796. Mac- 
pherson's writings include: Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in 
the Highlands, 1760; Fingal, an ancient epic poem, with other poems 
composed by Ossian, 1763; Temora, etc., 1763; The Iliad of Homer, 
translated into prose, 1773; History of Great Britain from the Restora- 
tion to the accession of the House of Hanover, 1775. 

There are several editions of the Ossianic "poems," but no critical 
text; a convenient edition was edited by William Sharp, 1896. The 
best biographical and critical accounts of Macpherson are T. B. 
Saunders's Life and Letters of James Macpherson, 1895, and J. S. 
Smart's Macpherson, an Episode in Literature, 1905. On the Os- 
sianic poetry, see Shairp's essay on "The Poetry of the Scottish 
Highlands," in Aspects of Poetry, and Beers's History of Romanti- 
cism in the i8th Century. 

Bernard Mandeville was born in Holland about 1760. He was 
educated at Leyden (M. D., 1691); emigrated to England, and 
practiced medicine unsuccessfully; was accused of writing in favor of 
the use of liquor, at the behest of distillers; rarely moved in society 



7i8 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

of the better sort, but attracted attention and controversy by the 
doctrines he expounded in his writings; of his later Hfe httle is 
known; he died in 1733. Mandeville's writings include The Grum- 
bling Hive (verse), 1705; The Fable of the Bees, etc., 1714; Free 
Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and Natural Happiness, 1720; and 
various pamphlets in verse and prose. 

There is no modern edition of The Fable of the Bees, and no bio- 
graphy of Mandeville. On his doctrines see Leslie Stephen's essay 
on "Mandeville's Fable of the Bees," in Free Thinking and Plain 
Speaking; also Stephen's History of English Thought in the 18th Cen- 
tury. Compare also Browning's interpretation of Mandeville's doc- 
trines in Parleyings with Certain People. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was born in London, May, 
1689. She was educated by a tutor, and exhibited remarkable abil- 
ity, especially in the classics; married Edward Wortley Montagu, a 
Whig Member of Parliament, 171 2; was well known as a wit, and 
exchanged letters and verses with Pope; went to Turkey in 17 17, her 
husband being ambassador to the Porte; returning to England, she 
became a leader in polite society; went to Twickenham to be near 
Pope, but later quarreled with him, and engaged in a war of satires; 
in 1739 went abroad, living successively at Avignon, Brescia, and 
Venice; did not return to England till after her husband's death, in 
1761; died August 21, 1762. The only writings of Lady Montagu 
published during her lifetime were some poems. Town Eclogues, 1716 
and 1747. 

The correspondence of Lady Montagu was edited by Moy 
Thomas in 1861 ; the letters are reprinted in the Bohn Library. For 
her biography, see Thomas's sketch; Leslie Stephen's article in the 
D. N. B.; and G. Paston's Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her 
Times, 1907. A convenient reprint, with comments, of many of the 
letters, forms A. R. Ropes's Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1892. 

Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, Norfolk, January 29, 1737. 
He was educated only at the grammar school; went to sea in a 
privateer about 1754; later worked in London, and had an appoint- 
ment in the revenue service, from which he was dismissed in 1774; 
in London met Benjamin Franklin, who gave him letters to America; 
reached America November, 1774, and became connected with a 
Philadelphia bookseller; made a reputation as pamphleteer on be- 
half of the revolutionists; served in the revolutionary army, as secre- 
tary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and as secretary to the 
Pennsylvania Assembly; went to France on a mission, 1781; re- 
turned to England in 1787, and devoted himself to the invention of 
an iron bridge; fled to Paris after the publication of The Rights of 
Man, 1791 ; was elected a member of the French Convention, 1792, 
and was influential till the fall of the Girondins; was arrested in 
December, 1793, and released on the demand of the American minis- 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 719 

ter; wrote pamphlets attacking Washington, believing him ungrate- 
ful for Paine's services; established a French community of "Theo- 
philanthropists," 1797; returned to the United States, 1802; Hved 
in New York during his last years, and was viewed with suspicion 
because of his anti-religious writings and his drinking habits; died 
July 8, 1809. Paine's writings include: Common Sense, 1776; The 
Crisis (16 pamphlets), 1776-83; The Rights of Man, 1791-92; The Age 
of Reason, 1794-95 (part 3, 1807); Letters to Citizens of the United 
States, 1802; besides very many political and social pamphlets. 

There have been various editions of Paine's works; the standard 
is now that of Moncure Conway (1894-96), who also wrote the Life 
of Paine, 1892. For criticism, see M. C. Tyler's Literary History of 
the American Revolution and Stephen's History of English Thought in 
the 18th Century. 

Ann Radcliffe (nee Ward) was born in London, July 9, 1764. 
She married William Radcliffe, subsequently proprietor of the 
English Chronicle, in 1787 ; began to write fiction in 1789; after 1797 
ceased to write for publication, excepting a memoir of travels; died 
February 7, 1823. Her writings include: A Sicilian Romance, 1790; 
The Romance of the Forest, 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794; 
The Italian, 1797; A Journey through Holland and the Western Fron- 
tier of Germany, 1795. A few other works were published posthu- 
mously. 

Mrs. Radcliffe's novels have been frequently reprinted, especially 
The Mysteries of Udolpho; a convenient edition of this was published 
by Routledge, 1891. For biography, see Garnett's article in the 
D. N. B.; for criticism, Beers's History of Romanticism in the i8th 
Century and Raleigh's English Novel. 

Sir Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton-Earl's, Devonshire, 
July 16, 1723. He was educated only at the grammar school; early 
showing talent for drawing, he was apprenticed in 1740 to the 
painter Hudson; soon became successful as a painter of portraits; 
studied in Italy, 1749-52; was so much sought after, on his return, 
that in 1759 he had 156 sitters; became a friend of Garrick, Gold- 
smith, and Johnson; founded the Literary Club, commonly called 
Dr. Johnson's Club, 1763 or 1764; was made President of the Royal 
Academy on its foundation in 1768; delivered several discourses to 
its members and students; was knighted in April, 1769; continued to 
paint actively till the failure of his eyesight, in 1790; died February 
23, 1792. Reynolds's only writings were the Discourses delivered at 
the Academy, and the few papers he contributed to Dr. Johnson's 
Idler series. 

The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds were published by 
Bohn, in two volumes, 1899-90, with a memoir by H. W. Beechey. 
See also Reynolds's Life, by Lord Ronald Gower (1902), and the 
article by Cosmo Monkhouse in the D. N. B. 



720 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

Samuel Richardson was born in Derbyshire, in 1689. He received 
but little education, but early became known among his friends as 
a skillful letter- writer; in 1706 was apprenticed to a stationer; later 
learned the printing business, and in 17 19 took it up for himself; 
printed various periodicals, and the Journals of the House of Com- 
mons; in 1739 engaged to write a volume of model letters for uncul- 
tivated persons, a design which led to his first novel ; from this time 
was distinguished as a novelist, though he continued his printing 
business till his death, on July 4, 1761. Richardson's only import- 
ant writings are the three novels: Pamela, 1740; Clarissa Harlowe, 
1747-8; Sir Charles Grandison, 1753. 

The best edition of Richardson's Works is in twelve volumes, 
1893, with a prefatory chapter by Leslie Stephen. There are many 
reprints of the individual novels, some of them conveniently 
abridged. For biography, see Richardson s Correspondence, with 
biographical introduction by Mrs. Barbauld, 1804, and the life by 
Austin Dobson in the Men of Letters series. For criticism, see the 
essay on "Richardson's Novels" in Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Li- 
brary; the various histories of English fiction; and J. Texte's Rous- 
seau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature (English translation, 
1899), — an important account of the connection of Richardson 
with the "sentimental movement" of the period. 

Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of 
Shaftesbury) was born in London, February 26, 167 1. He was 
tutored by the philosopher Locke; traveled and studied on the con- 
tinent; was Member of Parliament, 1695-98; succeeded to the earl- 
dom in 1699; took part in politics as a Whig, but owing to a weak 
constitution avoided much activity; spent a year in Holland, 1703-04; 
resided chiefly in the country; went to Italy for his health in 1711, 
and died there on February 15, 17 13. Shaftesbury's works are his 
miscellaneous essays, especially on philosophical and ethical themes; 
the chief ones were collected in his Characteristics of Men, Manners, 
Opinions, and Times, 171 1. 

There is an excellent edition of the Characteristics, edited by 
J. M. Robertson, 1900. For biography, see the Life, Unpublished 
Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, 
by Benjamin Rand, 1900; for criticism, Leslie Stephen's History of 
English Thought in the i8th Century. 

Tobias George Smollett was born in Dumbartonshire, Scot- 
land, in March, 1721. He studied medicine at Glasgow, and was 
apprenticed to a surgeon in 1736; in 1739 went to London and 
sought to produce a tragedy he had written; obtained a position as 
surgeon in the West India squadron, 1741, and spent some time in 
Jamaica; settled as a surgeon in Westminster, 1744; wrote some 
pamphlets and satires; began his work as a novelist in 1748, and 
continued to divide his time between medicine and literature; edited 
the Critical Review from 1756 and the British Magazine from 1760; 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 721 

undertook the innovation of publishing a novel as a serial in the lat- 
ter periodical ; engaged in many editorial undertakings, for aid in 
which he employed a corps of small writers; traveled on the Conti- 
nent for his health, 1763-65; grew morose and embittered, and be- 
came involved in many quarrels; again went abroad, and died in 
Italy, September 17, 1771. Smollett's works include: Roderick Ran- 
dom, 1748; Peregrine Pickle, 1751; Ferdinand Count Fathom, 1753; 
Complete History of England, 1757-58; Sir Launcelot Greaves, 1762; 
Travels through France and Italy, 1766; History and Adventures of an 
Atom, 1769; Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, 1771. 

The best edition of Smollett's novels is in twelve volumes, i8gg- 
1900, edited by Saintsbury. For biography, see his Life by David 
Hannay, in the Great Writers series; for criticism, Thackeray's 
English Humourists, and the various histories of fiction. 

Richard Steele was born in Dublin, in March, 1672. He at- 
tended Charterhouse School, London, and Merton College, Oxford, 
leaving in 1694 without a degree; entered the army, and became a 
captain; began to write for the stage in 1701; was appointed state 
gazetteer in 1707; founded The Taller in 1709; lost his gazetteership 
on account of political activity, 17 10; joined Addison in The Specta- 
tor, 171 1 ; engaged in political pamphleteering; was elected Member 
of Parliament, 17 13, but was expelled the next year for "seditious 
libel"; engaged in various journalistic undertakings; on the acces- 
sion of George I received several sinecure offices from the crown ; was 
Member of Parliament again in 17 15, and in the same year was 
knighted by the king; in 1719 engaged in a political quarrel with 
Addison; retired to his estate in Wales in 1724, and died there, Sep- 
tember I, 1729. Steele's writings include The Christian Hero, 1701 ; 
contributions to The Taller, 1 709-11; to The Spectator, 1711-12; to 
The Guardian, 1713; four comedies; and many pamphlets and short- 
lived periodicals. 

There is no standard collection of Steele's works. For The Spec- 
tator, see Addison; The Taller has been admirably edited by G. A. 
Aitken (four volumes, 1898). There are also well-edited volumes of 
selections from Steele in the Athenaeum Press series (ed. G. R. Car- 
penter) and the Clarendon Press texts (ed. Austin Dobson). The 
authoritative biography is G. A. Aitken's (1889) ; see, for briefer use, 
the article by Dobson in the D. N. B. For criticism, see the refer- 
ences under Addison. 

Laurence Sterne was born in Tipperary, Ireland, November 24, 
1 7 13. He attended school at Halifax, and Jesus College, Cam- 
bridge (B. A., 1736); entered the church, and received the vicarage 
of Sutton-in-the-Forest, which he held from 1738 to 1759; spent 
much time at York, and at Skelton Castle, the home of his friend 
Hall-Stevenson, with a social club which came to be called "The 
Demoniacs"; quarreled with his mother, and neglected her during 
her last years; contributed to Whig journals; was unfaithful to his 



722 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

wife, who became temporarily insane ; after the publication of the first 
volume of Tristram Shandy went to London and enjoyed his fame; 
received the living of Coxwold, and moved there in 1760; went to 
France for his health, 1762, and enjoyed a brilliant reception in Paris 
society ; returned to England in 1 764, buta gain visited the Continent, 
October, 1765, on the "sentimental journey;" from 1766 engaged in 
a prolonged flirtation with Mrs. Eliza Draper, the wife of an India 
official, and wrote for her the Journal to Eliza; was always in doubt- 
ful health, and, his weakness increasing, he died in London lodgings, 
March 18, 1768. Sterne's writings include The Life and Opinions of 
Tristram Shandy, 1759-67; Sermons of Mr. Yorick, 1760-69; A Sen- 
timental Journey through France and Italy, 1768; and various letters, 
published posthumously. 

The best edition of Sterne's Works is edited by Saintsbury (six 
volumes, 1894). There are also a convenient two-volume edition in 
Macmillan's Library of English Classics, and various reprints of 
Tristram and the Sentimental Journey. A critical biography was writ- 
ten by H. D. Traill for the Men of Letters series, but the authorita- 
tive Life is now that of W. L. Cross (1909). For criticism, see Thack- 
eray's English Humourists; an essay by E. H. A. Scherer, in Essays 
on English Literature; an essay by Leslie Stephen, in Hours in a Li- 
brary; an essay by P. E. More, in Shelburne Essays, third series; and 
the work by Texte cited under Richardson. 

Jonathan Swift was born at Dublin, November 30, 1667. He 
attended Trinity College (B. A., 1686); on going to England lived 
with Sir William Temple at Moor Park, and acted as his secretary; 
made unsuccessful efforts in poetry; entered the church, 1694, and 
received a living near Belfast; returned to Moor Park, 1696, and 
employed himself in study and in preparing Temple's memoirs for 
publication; made the acquaintance of Esther Johnson ("Stella"), a 
member of Temple's household; on Temple's death, in 1699, returned 
to Ireland, and resided there, in various ecclesiastical positions, for 
the rest of his life; made, however, frequent and sometimes pro- 
longed visits to England; in 1701 was followed to Ireland by Stella, 
who thereafter resided near him till her death in 1728; in England 
became a friend of Addison and Pope, and had some influence in 
courtly circles as a powerful pamphleteer, — at first on the Whig 
side, later on the Tory; became Dean of St. Patrick's, 17 13, but was 
disappointed in his hopes of a bishopric; was rumored to have been 
married to Stella, but the facts remain uncertain; in 1724 successfully 
opposed the introduction into Ireland of the currency called " Wood's 
Halfpence," by his Drapier Letters; joined Pope and Arbuthnot in 
the writing of the "Scriblerus" Miscellanies; after Stella's death 
became increasingly bitter and misanthropic, and after 1738 ex- 
hibited signs of mental decay; in 1742 was committed to the care of 
guardians; died October 19, 1745. Swift's works include: A Tale of a 
Tub, with an account of a Battle between the Ancient and Modern 
Books, 1704; Argument on the Abolishing of Christianity in England, 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 723 

1708; Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 171 1; Letters concerning the 
Brass Halfpence ("by M. B. Drapier"), 1724; Travels . . . by 
Lemuel Gulliver, 1726; Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (with Pope), 
1727-29; Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, 1738; and 
very many pamphlets embodying discussions of English and Irish 
affairs and theological and social satire. 

The standard edition of Swift's Works was made by Walter 
Scott; the second edition of this was reprinted in 1883. There are 
good volumes of selections edited by Henry Craik (Clarendon Press) 
and F. C. Prescott (Holt and Co.), and many reprints of Gulliver's 
Travels (one of the best being that in the Temple Classics), Swift's 
life has been written by Leslie Stephen, for the Men of Letters series, 
and by Henry Craik (1885). See also the important work by 
J. Churton Collins: Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study, 1893. 
Additional criticism may be found in Thackeray's English Humour- 
ists, and in an interesting essay in Miss Vida Scudder's Social Ideals 
in English Letters. 

Horace Walpole (fourth Earl of Orford) was born in London, 
September 24, 1717 (O. S.). He was educated at Eton and at King's 
College, Cambridge, leaving in 1739 to make a tour of the Continent 
in company with Thomas Gray; quarreled with Gray, and they 
separated in 1741, but were afterward reconciled and remained close 
friends; became Member of Parliament, and held several sinecure 
ofl5ces through the influence of his father, Sir Robert Walpole, 
prime minister; in 1747 took a house at Twickenham, and began the 
development of a pseudo-Gothic residence, "Strawberry Hill"; 
established a private press there, where were printed Gray's poems 
and many other books; remained in Parliament till 1767, but took 
little part in politics; spent much time in letter- writing; succeeded 
to the earldom of Orford in 1791; died in London, March 2, 1797. 
Walpole's writings include: A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble 
Authors of England, I'j ^8; Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1762-71; 
The Castle ofOtranto, 1764; The Mysterious Mother, a Tragedy, 1768; 
besides the hundreds of letters pulDlished posthumously. 

Walpole's Letters were collected by Peter Cunningham, in eight 
volumes, 1891; a more complete edition was made by Mrs. Paget 
Toynbee, in sixteen volumes, 1903-05. The Castle ofOtranto is most 
accessible in the reprint in Cassell's National Library. For bio- 
graphy, see Austin Dobson's Horace Walpole, a Memoir, 1890. An 
agreeable selection from the letters, with comments, forms L. B. 
Seeley's Horace Walpole and his World. For criticism, see Macau- 
lay's essay on Walpole, Leslie Stephen's essay in Hours in a Library, 
and (for The Castle of Olranto) Beers's History of Romanticism in the 
i8th Century. 

Joseph Warton was born at Dunsfold, Surrey, in April, 1722. 
He went to Winchester School and Oriel College, Oxford (B. A., 
1744); entered the church, and was his father's curate; wrote poetry 



724 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

as a recreation; traveled as chaplain to the Duke of Bolton; became 
second master at Winchester School, 1755, remaining there till 1793 
(head master from 1766); was a friend of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick; retired to Wickham in 1793, where 
he died February 23, 1800. Warton's works include: Odes on Various 
Subjects, 1746; edition and translation of Virgil, 1753; contributions 
to Dr. Johnson's Adventurer, 1753-56; Essay on the Genius and Writ- 
ings of Pope (vol. i) 1756 and (vol. ii) 1782; an edition of Pope's 
Works, 1797. 

There is no modern edition of the Essay on Pope. For biography, 
see Sidney Lee's article in the D. N. B.; for criticism, an essay on 
"The Wartons" in John Dennis's Studies in English Literature, and 
Beers's History of Romanticism in the i8th Century. 

Thomas Warton (brother of Joseph Warton) was born at Basing- 
stoke, January 9, 1728. He was educated by his father and at 
Trinity College, Oxford (B. A., 1747); took orders, but remained at 
the University as tutor and fellow; wrote poetry as an amateur; 
studied early English literature with a thoroughness very unusual 
for his time; was elected Professor of Poetry in 1757, and for ten 
years lectured on classical topics; in 1785 became Camden Professor 
of History; was appointed Poet Laureate on the death of Whitehead 
in 1785, but was unsuccessful as an official poet; died in his college, 
May 20, 1790. Warton's works include: Observations on the Fairy 
Queen of Spenser, 1754; contributions to Johnson's Idler, 1758-59; 
an edition of Theocritus, 1770; History of English Poetry, 1774-81 
(never finished) ; an edition of Milton's minor poems, 1785 ; and vari- 
ous poems. 

There is no modern edition of Warton's Observations on the Fairy 
Queen. For biography and criticism, the references are the same as 
for Joseph Warton. 

Gilbert White was born at Selborne, Hampshire, July 18, 1720. 
He attended Oriel College, Oxford (B. A., 1743) ; became a fellow of 
Oriel; entered the church, 1747, and held various curacies, but ap- 
parently never aspired to important livings because of his desire to 
live at Selborne; resided there continuously until his death, and 
devoted himself largely to observation as a naturalist; in 1767 
became acquainted with the naturalist Pennant, and in 1769 with 
Barrington, his later letters to these friends forming the nucleus of 
his Selborne; contributed to the transactions of the Royal Society; 
gradually formed the idea of making a book from his notes and let- 
ters; never married, but entertained hospitably at his home; died 
there on June 26, 1793. White's one book was The Natural History 
and Antiquities of Selborne, 1789. 

There have been several modern editions of Selborne; one of the 
best is an American reprint with an Introduction by John Bur- 
roughs, 1895. The Life and Letters of Gilbert White of Selborne, by 
R. Holt-White, appeared in 1901. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Addison, Joseph, 159. 

Anti- Jacobin, The, 691. 

Berkeley, George, 231. 

Bolingbroke, Lord, 273. 

Boswell, James, 624. 

Burke, Edmund, 558. 

Burney, Frances (Mme. d'Arblay), 511. 

Chesterfield, Lord, 315. 

Cibber, Colley, 269. 

Cowper, William, 525. 

Defoe, Daniel, i. 

Dennis, John, 211. 

Fielding, Henry, 293. 

Gibbon, Edward, 537. 

Godwin, William, 667. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 435. 

Gray, Thomas, 324. 

Hume, David, 410. 

Hurd, Richard, 462. 

Johnson, Samuel, 341. 



"Junius," 425. 

Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 684. 

Macpherson, James, 697. 

Mandeville, Bernard, 245. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 255. 

Monthly Review, The, 534. 

Paine, Thomas, 616. 

Pope, Alexander, 265. 

Radcliffe, Ann, 676. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 421. 

Richardson, Samuel, 281. 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 222. 

Smollett, Tobias, 502. 

Steele, Richard, 123. 

Sterne, Laurence, 480. 

Swift, Jonathan, 52. 

Walpole, Horace, 467. 

Warton, Joseph, 336. 

Warton, Thomas, 331. 

White, Gilbert, 550. 



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